The good news? The seven-way LG nomination contest is no longer a circular firing squad anymore — as State Senator Steve Martin took to the airwaves talking about the importance of character and the incredulity of the third-party mailer boosting Stewart.
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read this incredibly misleading ad… but we took it downstairs to the Bearing Drift Laboratory for Accuracy in Media and fixed it for the viewing audience:
So that’s done…
The inestimable Jim Riley has the analysis on the junk issue of “budget cuts” vs. actual rates of taxation for Virginia localities:
This gets to an important issue. Let’s say that your home value goes down from one year to the next and your county board changes the tax rate so you pay the same amount in taxes in both years. Percentage-wise, wouldn’t that mean your taxes went up? After all, you are paying the same amount in taxes on something that is not worth what it was before.
Would you rather pay 10% on a dollar? or 5% on five dollars?
That’s the secret in terms of real estate tax rates vs. equalized tax rates. As the price of property increases, by law the rate of taxation must be equalized — i.e. you cannot effect a tax increase through a reassessment. So what do local politicians do? They take the old tax rate and make it the new advertised tax rate. So the rate appears to be level… but the burden of taxation goes up, up, up…
Now to be fair to Corey Stewart (and every other conservative supervisor or city council member in Virginia), a well-oiled and tight local government will by simple inertia grow its budget — Richmond forces localities to raise taxes. Only if there is either (a) tremendous growth or (b) tremendous waste (or tremendous savings due to a bond refinancing) can you hold the line or even cut taxes. Inertia tends to take over… and when Richmond cuts things such as CSA money, education, and the like — guess who has to pick up the remainder?
Nevertheless, rather than paper it over, pull a quick 4-8 year stint as a supervisor and then leave a mess behind… it’d be much more refreshing to see either of the two local supervisor candidates talk about how the relationship between Richmond and her localities is broken.
But alas… that’s asking a bit much.
