County budgets

continued from page 1 the budget cut away more funding for a total shortfall of $13 million compared to the state’s original guidance.

“We share the frustration of being in the position of being in limbo while trying to finalize the budget, and appreciate the Board of Supervisors’ flexibility and consideration,” Interim Superintendent Dan Smith said at the county board’s March 16 budget work session.

The School Board also asked for $6.2 million more local tax funding than county staff had advised would be available, overall requesting $75 million more in county funding than last year. This was the first year that guidance was based on a new policy of the county board, which dedicates 60% of the year-over-year growth in local tax revenue to the school district and reserves the remaining 40% for growth in the county budget.

The school district’s budget request won them accolades from supervisors for their restraint—typically the difference between county guidance and the school district’s request is much larger, as is the year-over-year growth.

“Dr. Smith, you have given us I think the most reasonable, responsible, understandable, explainable budget in many, many years, and I very much appreciate it,” County Chair Phyllis J. Randall (D-At Large) said.

Supervisors ultimately added $3 million to school funding, filling part of the $6.2 million difference between county funding and the School Board’s request. But with no action from the General Assembly expected until after the Board of Supervisors holds its final vote on the county budget April 4, how large a funding gap will remain when the new fiscal year starts July 1 remains unclear.

Randall pointed to the state’s touted $3 billion surplus.

“Let’s assume the mistake was made in good faith by VDOE. Let’s assume it really was a mistake. The way you fix a mistake is to fix the mistake, and if you’re sitting on $3 billion, there’s no reason we should be having this conversation right now, none whatsoever,” she said. “The logical conclusion is, somebody’s trying to defund some school systems, and that makes me very upset.”

She also pointed out it is far from the first time local leaders have had to step in where state funding has fallen short.

“I’m tired of paying for positions in the Health Department, and court services, and probation and parole—in every area the state underfunds their people or their systems, we pick it up, and then they get to brag that they didn’t raise their taxes. Well, you don’t have a surplus until you pay your bills, and they have not paid their bills,” she said.

The largest single category of spending in the county’s capital budget is transportation, at $2.2 billion over six years—almost all of it to build roads, considered a state responsibility. Two cents of the county’s real estate tax go directly toward transportation projects.

Republican and Democrat supervisors alike expressed frustration with the state’s school funding shortcomings.

“I think we need to pressure the state to fix their problem, and not have us fixing their problem like we pretty much always do every year,” Supervisor Tony R. Buffington (R-Blue Ridge) said.

“This governor calls himself the education governor and has ad nauseam since the day he was elected. It’s a joke. It’s a farce. It’s been a farce since day one,” Supervisor Michael R. Turner (D-Ashburn) said. And he added the state Department of Education’s funding shortfall is no longer a mistake.

“An error that remain uncorrected by a person that has fiscal power to fix that error is no longer an error—it’s a malevolent act against Virginia communities,” Turner said.

The next day, the Youngkin administration issued a press release once again trumpeting that state tax revenues are running ahead of projections.

“February’s revenue numbers confirm that our December forecast continues to accurately represent that we will have a multi-billion-dollar surplus,” Youngkin stated. “Virginians remain overtaxed, and the Commonwealth has abundant resources available to lower costs and cut taxes for families and local businesses. At the same time, we can make critical investments to transform our behavioral health system, invest in education and law enforcement, and strengthen communities across Virginia.”

Loudoun Now has contacted the governor’s off to ask whether he will propose filling that state funding shortfall.

Mind the Gap

Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles) wondered if the school district could find that $13 million in one-time expenses in its budget—allowing the Board of Supervisors to cover the gap later in the year during end-of-year fund balance discussions if the state does not. The county government may have more than $100 million unspent in its general fund after closing the books on a fiscal year, but that money is only used for one-time spending such as construction projects, bonuses or buying new equipment, rather than reoccurring expenses such as paying salaries.

Smith said the school staff was only able to find $2.6 million in one-time expenses in their $2.2 billion budget—a budget that includes a $1.7 billion operating fund, and a $27.9 million capital asset preservation program fund which covers replacement or major maintenance of assets like roofs, windows, HVAC systems and plumbing.

“It would be really hard for me to think that in a $2 billion budget there isn’t somewhere, say, between $5 and $10 million in one-time funding,” Letourneau said. Buffington also pointed out the School Board recently spent more than $20 million of its own fund balance. The School Board in May 2022 spent $21.4 million in yearend fund balance on projects including new school bus cameras, hiring bonuses, HVAC replacements, fence repairs and water bottle filling stations.

Some supervisors pushed to cover more of the funding gap. Turner framed the discussion as a choice between tax increases. Combined with other spending added to the county government budget, funding either the full difference between the county guidance and school district request or the gap in state funding would have pushed the real estate tax rate higher.

“If we honor the $75 million increase and cover the $6.3 million that we’re currently short, we add a half penny and bring us up to 88 (cents). And if the board decided to fix the entire state problem, we hold it at the current rate of 89 (cents) and get an extra $13 million, which fixes the state problem. So that’s the binary choice we have,” he said.

Supervisor Juli E. Briskman (D-Algonkian) pushed to fund the full difference between local funding policy and School Board request. She pointed out the difference to a household paying the average real estate tax bill of raising the tax rate a half-cent, necessary to fund that difference without cutting elsewhere, is about $35 a year.

“That’s barely even a dinner. And I know these things are tight for everybody right now, but we’re talking $35 for the average household in order to close the local funding gap for our school system and tell our community that we care about our kids, we care about the folks who work hard every day, get up early every morning to go and teach our kids,” she said.

But other supervisors pointed out many people are facing their own tight budgets—and real estate bills are already going up. Letourneau pointed out the budget overall already represents an increase in that tax bill of more than $300, because of increasing real estate values.

“I think $35 in a vacuum with nothing else going on, OK. But I think that this year, people have experienced so many ‘$35’ that those $35 after a while add up,” Randall said, also pointing to the overall size of school district budget. And she said in her own lifetime, there have been times she wouldn’t have been able to come up with $35 at all—“I don’t take small amounts of money for granted, because I have been in situations where I need to eat and I didn’t have five dollars.”

Supervisors voted to add $3 million to the local funding transfer to schools 8-01, with Supervisor Kristen C. Umstattd (D-Leesburg) absent.

The school budget also does not include funding to support the administrative costs of allowing collective bargaining with school employees. Smith said that is estimated at no more than $3.5 million. The School Board is scheduled to vote on—and expected to approve—collective bargaining on March 28. Smith said for this year, school staff members will recommend using end-of-year fund balance to cover that expense. n

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Passing Down the Bills

The governor and members of the General Assembly once again are taking a celebratory victory lap to tout budget surpluses and tax rebates.

Holding down taxes is (or should be) a core government function. However, the General Assembly has transformed that duty into a bipartisan sport—one played on a field where it holds a significant advantage over the commonwealth’s localities.

This year, local governments find themselves again having to pick up the tab when the state leaders sidestep their commitments. This time it is education funding and mental health treatment. Add those costs to the millions of local dollars residents pay to build state roads—not just through the various tolls, taxes and fees imposed on motorists across the region, but local taxes contributed on top of that.

That passing down of funding responsibility only exacerbates the inattention to fiscal discipline closer to home. Yes, the state government should cover the $7.4 million gap attributed to a budgeting error, but our local leaders also could have found at least that amount to cut somewhere in the $2.6 billion combined schools and general county government operating budgets. Instead, the General Assembly’s failure was converted directly into a local tax increase.

This fall voters will choose representatives to fill all 140 assembly seats—Loudoun residents will pick seven of them. It would be refreshing to send a delegation that put a priority on delivering state funding for state services, rather than passing the bill down for others to pay. n

Balderdash

Editor:

What is “safe” and “affordable” housing? Does the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments know? The authors of the Metropolitan Washington Regional Fair Housing Plan Draft Executive Summary dated January 2023 clearly don’t. If they did, they would have included definitions for both in this summary.

That begs the question, why didn’t they? An organization that is so enthusiastic about defining the word “equity” to mean something different than what is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary should have invested the same rigor and gusto into defining “safe” and “affordable” in 29 pages that they did calling everyone who isn’t African American a racist. These 29 pages do nothing to inform the reader of actual root causes and are intended to pollute your mind with sleight of hand and parlor tricks to push an agenda. You are a racist if you don’t agree with their premises.

Bollocks and Balderdash!

Dwellings, be it apartments, multi or single-family homes are not safe based on race. They are safe based on craftsmanship, building materials, county codes, inspections and whether the county attorney’s office prosecutes criminals who terrorize in high crime neighborhoods or lets them out with a slap on the wrist. They are also safe based on whether a federal Depart- ment of Justice and Homeland Security actually stop the flow of illegal aliens into our country.

I have lived in many parts of Fairfax and Loudoun County. Rent in this area has gone up, so have the costs of buying a home. The cause of this is supply and demand. When you flood a market with more people than products, costs go up. When you flood a market with more people, crime goes up. When you let people who commit crimes off, and tell cops not to chase criminals, more crimes happen. This didn’t require a report from MWCOG to figure out.

The real purpose of this report is to exert more government over you and your life. To create a non-existent problem out of thin air. To take more of your income based on a fake problem that requires more tax revenue to fix. Loudoun doesn’t have a NIMBY issue, Loudoun has a progressive board majority that is actively marching us toward a big government and control end state that no one should want. The last time the government said something was good for you killed a boat load of people and retarded the growth of your school kids by sticking them at home for almost two years.

Nothing in this report should be adopted by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. It’s full of false statements and built on false pretenses, and it’s so obvious a fifth grader can see it.

— Christopher Rohland, Leesburg

Not My Shire

Editor:

One wonders what Orc infested part of Loudoun County Woody Kaye lives in. His fantastical analogy of Loudoun as Mordor (Letters, March 16) is nothing like the Loudoun I’ve lived in for over 20 years. Perhaps Kaye should put down his book, turn off Fox News and explore all that the county has to offer, rather than brooding over a map of Middle Earth.

Kaye seems concerned that the U.S. Constitution is somehow being overrun by local socialists, but any week in Loudoun would suggest otherwise. Commerce and private enterprise abound; Loudoun regularly ranks as one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Religious faiths of all sorts freely meet and worship. Private property rights are untrammeled, resulting in many of the traffic and development issues that bother Kaye (or would he rather have government in control of the land?).

Local government provides the services that “we the people” want—and they do it well, as evidenced by the low crime rate and plethora of county parks, sport fields and libraries. Our public roads and infrastructure allow for easy trips to the store, the city, the mountains, or a flight to pretty much anywhere on earth. If planes

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LETTERS to the Editor

continued from page 40 or cars aren’t your thing, now you can take the train to D.C.

In short, people freely choose to move here for the quality of life and quality public schools—now with more than 80,000 students! If this is Mordor, I’m glad to be here.

Meanwhile, Kaye longs for the Hobbits only Shire of his past and waxes nostalgic about a pre-Roosevelt America (both Teddy and Franklin no less!), when government sanctioned racism, denied women the right to vote, forced Native Americans from their lands, child labor laws were non-existent and corporate robber-barons exploited workers and the environment. Somehow, I don’t think Frodo would approve.

The freedoms granted by the Constitution allow counties and the country to grow and change. A quote inscribed in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial from the famously conflicted Founding Father himself sums it up: “… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized