Trickle-down taxes from Richmond

Many of Virginia's lawmakers have pledged to oppose any state tax increase this year, citing high unemployment and a record number of foreclosures. They say they won't add to the financial difficulties of the commonwealth's citizens and businesses during this recession.

Don't believe them.

Instead of balancing the state budget by spreading the burden, they are further shifting state obligations to Virginia's cities and counties - forcing them to find more money to keep the school lights on, staff the jails and fulfill all the other mandates the state has imposed on local governments.

In the upcoming two-year state budget, legislators are making $4 billion worth of cuts. They propose taking hundreds of millions from schools and hospitals, paring pensions for government employees, restricting children's access to health care and continuing to neglect Virginia's transportation system.

Those needs don't disappear, even in a recession as deep as this one.

Neither do other responsibilities the state passed to local governments, including inspecting restaurants and commercial dog-breeding operations, monitoring the progress of home-schooled students and providing offices and equipment for court-related services and constitutional offices. The state requires schools to maintain 21-to-1 student-teacher ratios, provide free textbooks and transportation and offer programs for at-risk students and free and reduced-price breakfasts in any school where at least one-fourth of students qualify for them.

What the state doesn't do is pay for all those mandates. And so the decision not to raise taxes may allow legislators to honor their pledges to special-interest groups, but it leaves local governments in a horrible fix.

City councils cannot pass the costs of delivering essential services to anyone but the taxpayer. Already, the Virginia Municipal League reports, the commonwealth's schools are meeting state and federal standards only because cities and counties are spending $3 billion more a year than is required. Local money, mostly property taxes, represents 22 percent of all K-12 funding.

To balance their budgets, local governments are facing choices. Do they increase the property tax rate and charge for services, as Virginia Beach officials are considering with a $10-per-month garbage fee? Do they close schools, parks, libraries? Curtail police patrols and shutter fire stations? Lay off employees?

State lawmakers acknowledge it's tough for local governments. But, as Gov. Bob McDonnell said, "They'll be innovative, they'll be creative, and they'll find a way to manage better."

In the Norfolk schools, innovative solutions include a proposal to cut 410 jobs, including 135 teachers, shutter a school for young mothers, end field trips and boost employees' health insurance costs by 12.5 percent, effectively cutting their take-home pay.

Suffolk is talking about closing three elementary schools and offering retirement incentives. Portsmouth has discussed eliminating teachers' jobs or cutting pay. Virginia Beach officials have floated a 4-cent tax increase and a garbage fee, although none of these proposals has been officially recommended.

In Gloucester, the options include a four-day school week, a price tag for participation in athletics and closing one of two middle schools. Parents have said a tax increase is preferable to those cuts.

Martinsville will "manage better" by losing 10 percent of its school employees. Prince William County schools plan to eliminate more than 700 jobs, terminate all school bus routes to specialty schools, increase parking fees for high school students, charge athletic participation fees and reduce central office budgets by 10 percent.

Montgomery and Roanoke counties are looking at 20 percent cuts to most departments.

The list goes on. Cumberland County, which just five years ago dealt with failing schools and now has met state standards at all of them, faces returning to 2005 funding levels - or a tax increase of more than 40 percent, in addition to a 12 percent hike in real estate assessments.

In other words, even where localities make the steepest cuts, they may be simply unable to meet state mandates without raising property taxes.

When local governments make hard choices, and when they choose to close schools or raise taxes, voters need to remember who set the standards and determined the state's spending priorities. That would be lawmakers in Richmond.

Shifting the tax burden from Richmond to Norfolk and Portsmouth and Virginia Beach shouldn't mean the blame shifts with it. State lawmakers get to say they've kept their pledges to not raise taxes. But that doesn't make it true.