FCTA Speaks at Pre-2022 General Assembly Public Hearing
-- on 01/08/2022
FCTA's Charles McAndrew
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the Northern Virginia General Assembly. My name is Charles McAndrew and I am a board member of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance. I have five short issues to discuss.
As I understand, the Commonwealth of Virginia has a $2.6 BILLION surplus. I support a pending bill to increase the Virginia standard deduction from $9,000 for a married couple to $18,000 and furthermore I support eliminating the grocery tax. Grocery tax is a burden for lower income residents. You should consider ZERO-BASED BUDGETING and have your Director of Finance carefully comb through the state budget to eliminate redundant and outdated programs. Since 1961, the Virginia General Fund, which is primarily based on income tax revenue has increased six times faster than population and inflation.
It is time to seriously consider addressing transportation problems to remedy traffic jams and bottlenecks all through Virginia. This should be a priority for the State. Hopefully, funds from the U.S. Government Infrastructure Bill will be used judicially to fund roads and bridges and not bicycle paths!
Recently, the General Assembly increased the felony charge to $1,000 and above. This encourages "smash and grab thieves" to, for example, raid a jewelry store and each thief takes $800 each means that they all will be charged a misdemeanor.
As to a viable and reliable energy source, I support the completion of the North Anna and Surrey nuclear sites as I believe in clean and reliable energy and nuclear energy is one way to go!
The General Assembly voted last year to throw out VOTER ID! This is a huge mistake! Voter ID is necessary for voter integrity. We must have voter ID if you want voter integrity. When I voted last November, they asked for my voter ID. Our neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico have voter ID.
Thank you for your attention.
FCTA's Arthur Purves
I am Arthur Purves and address you as president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance. Thank you for this hearing. I have five topics.
First, it was 19 degrees this morning, and we just had a 20-hour, 50-mile shutdown on I-95 due to snow and ice. You should claim victory in your war against global warming, withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and repeal the Virginia Clean Energy Act, which drives up the cost of living and replaces reliable with unreliable energy. Solar panel production is not clean.
Why does Germany, a leader in clean energy, need a new natural gas pipeline?
The evidence for a climate change crisis is sketchy. For example, when I asked an employee who had worked at a ski resort for 32 years if the ski season had been shortened, the answer was no. For another example, Bangladesh flooding is the result of silt runoff due to deforestation, not rising sea levels.
Second, for two decades, Fairfax County real estate taxes have been increasing three times faster than household income. It is the county's "unaffordable housing" program. The tax hikes are driven by employee compensation. This year the supervisors have floated a 9 percent real estate tax hike so employees can have 6 percent raises. Unions donated $100,000 to Fairfax County Chairman's 2019 election campaign. To end this conflict of interest, we ask you to ban union contributions to local election campaigns.
Third, regarding CRT, public schools are a leading cause of poverty and racial inequality. They provide no upward mobility. The most important years are 1st and 2nd grades where reading and math facts are taught. However, by third grade, Blacks and Latinos are behind whites and Asians and never catch up. The reason is that schools teach "whole word" instead of intensive phonics and ignore arithmetic drill. The students who succeed are the ones who get phonics and math drill outside of school. Hence, the public-school curriculum advantages whites and Asians and disadvantages Blacks and Latinos. Thus, public schools fit the CRT definition of "systemic racism". More money won't fix public schools; competition will.
Fourth, families are crucial to student success. Edmund Burke said, "Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality." The same can be said of successful families. But in literature and Family Life Education, schools teach that morality is optional and unexpected. The destruction of families is government's growth engine.
Fifth, Edmund Burke also said, "The essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws." COVID lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, mandates for experimental, misnamed vaccines, and the banning of low-risk, low-cost cures such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) come to mind.
By giving Virginians a taste of tyranny, you may have awakened them.
FCTA's Bill Peabody
We trust much of the state surplus will be returned via the $18,000 standard deduction and the end of the grocery tax. How about the hard part: lowering spending?
Some ideas:
Education: The state portion of school funding works out to about $12,000 per pupil on average. In FxCo, 5.3% of children are being "held out". Here's an opportunity to lower head count permanently. A small $3,000 tax credit might suffice. This county charged taxpayers $20,000 per child in 2019 to add 1000 to enrollment. Last time I checked, marginal cost is related to marginal savings. If you apply the $9,000 potential savings to 5% "held out" statewide, you get $540,000,000.
The new administration is offering school choice. How about choice with taxpayer savings?
Green energy: Virginia has two half-completed nuke sites that provide 28% of our electricity. If we simply complete construction as intended, we could eliminate coal use and be the greenest state in the USA. BTW, any pol voting for green initiatives should have converted from evil natural gas to a heat pump already. No takers?
Transportation: Everyone on this stage said the Silver Line would be a great investment. At its peak, actual ridership reached 65% of projections. All we hear from Richmond is transit and bike lanes; never roads.
Crime: HB257 was the main losing issue for the DNC. So repeal?
HB2290 and similar reduced-punishment bills are causing police to flee. A recently resigned police officer said, "Without felony theft, I have no leverage over repeat offenders." So repeal?