Tuesday's special election is a showdown on taxes
By PETER FERRARA
ON Tuesday, a special election will be held in the 37th Senate District, which is in the Springfield/Centreville area, to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Warren Barry. That bellwether vote will have a huge impact on what happens to taxes throughout Northern Virginia.
On the issue of taxes, the lines could not be more clearly drawn in that race. The Republican nominee, Ken Cuccinelli, has proposed a statewide cap on runaway property tax increases.
Under the plan, counties could not increase property taxes by more than 5 percent each year. That makes sense, because taxpayer incomes generally do not grow by more than 5 percent a year.
Yet throughout Northern Virginia, property taxes have been soaring at more than twice that rate. Just this past year, property taxes increased in Fairfax County a whopping 14 percent on average, after a runaway 13 percent increase last year.
Indeed, since Kate Hanley was re-elected as the chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in 1999, saying she saw ``no need" to raise taxes, the annual property tax bill for the average family in the county is up almost $1,000.
In Loudoun County, property taxes soared 63 percent between 1999 and 2002. In Arlington, property taxes increased by 34 percent over the past three years.
Such tax increases are especially burdensome to seniors on fixed incomes and young people with families struggling to make ends meet. Because of these wild increases, property taxes are taking a bigger and bigger share of taxpayer incomes each year, leaving them with less and less to support their families.
Cuccinelli's plan would stop that, through state legislation prohibiting property taxes in any county from increasing faster than 5 percent per year. That would reasonably allow property taxes to grow along with average incomes each year, but no faster.
However, the Democrat nominee, Cathy Belter, opposes that plan. She insists that counties need more revenue so they can increase their spending faster.
Indeed, at a meeting of the Northern Virginia Roundtable which I attended on July 25, Belter said that if elected, she wants to consider income tax increases. She told the gathering that she is from New York, where people are used to paying a lot higher taxes than in Virginia.
Cuccinelli, by contrast, thinks that raising income taxes would be nuts. Virginians already pay more than enough in taxes, and an income tax hike would be quite harmful to the economy, which is struggling to get off the floor.
Cuccinelli also opposes the proposed 11 percent increase in the sales tax that is on the ballot this November. Belter naturally favors that tax increase as well.
Cuccinelli has taken the Americans for Tax Reform pledge not to raise taxes. That pledge has been taken by thousands of federal, state and local pro-taxpayer candidates across the country in recent years, including President Bush.
Belter, of course, has refused to take that pledge. She gets a point for honesty for that, because she favors increasing sales taxes, income taxes and property taxes.
This race will be closely watched all across Northern Virginia as a bellwether test of voter sentiment on taxes.
A Belter win will be taken as showing voter support for even higher increases in taxes and government spending. It will open the door to more rapid property tax increases, give a huge boost to the effort to increase sales taxes, and lead the General Assembly to consider further tax increases next year.
But if Cuccinelli wins, the Northern Virginia tax increase express will be derailed. His win will be taken as a warning from voters that they want to keep Virginia's tradition of fiscal conservatism, with restrained tax and spending burdens.
Cuccinelli and Belter disagree on just about every other issue as well, in a classic liberal/conservative matchup.
Cuccinelli favors maintaining the state's right to work tradition. Belter's campaign is based on the support of unions that would repeal right to work in the state and deliver workers to union control, regardless of their preferences.
Cuccinelli favors devoting more resources to transportation needs by restraining state spending on lesser priorities, not by raising taxes. Belter favors increasing government spending on just about everything else as well as roads, and raising taxes to do it.
Belter favors adding homosexuality to the anti-discrimination policy of Fairfax County Public Schools. Cuccinelli opposes special preferences for homosexuals, and says they have the same rights as everyone else under current law.
Cuccinelli is pro-life; Belter is pro-abortion.
So the stakes are clearly drawn. If you favor across-the-board liberalism, higher taxes and more rapidly increasing government spending, you should be supporting Belter.
If you favor a mainstream conservative candidate who wants to hold the line on taxes and spending and maintain Virginia's traditional fiscal conservatism, you should be supporting Cuccinelli.
Peter Ferrara is president of the Virginia Club for Growth and director of the International Center for Law and Economics in Washington, D.C.
http://cold.jrnl.com/cfdocs/new/ffx/story.cfm?paper=ffx§ion=fp&snumber=23
Did you see the backhanded endorsement of Belter that the Journal gave? I was disappointed that they came out for Belter, usually their editors are smarter than that. Fortunately they had the Ferrara piece to counter it. Maybe they planned it that way...