Steve Burns
WMAL.com
RICHMOND, Va. – (WMAL) The Virginia House rejected a proposal from Gov. Ralph Northam Wednesday to raise hotel and real estate taxes in Northern Virginia to pay its share of dedicated funding for Metro, instead sticking with the original plan to use funds otherwise earmarked for road and transit improvements in Northern Virginia. The move was blasted by local lawmakers, including Republicans, who said raiding the funds would mean fewer roads being built in the region.
The taxes passed in the Senate, only to get shot down in the House moments later. Members of the Boards of Supervisors in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William County have said local taxes may need to be raised to make up for the loss.
“It’s not a shock, but it’s a disgrace,” Loudoun County Supervisor Matt Letourneau told WMAL. “We’re going to have to come up with local money. It could be tax increases for citizens through property taxes.”
The new taxes, going from two to three percent on hotel stays and 15 to 20 cents per $100 of assessed value on home sales, would have resulted in about $30 million per year, part of a total package of $150 million the state is looking to pay Metro every year in perpetuity, combined with similar packages from Maryland and the District to total $500 million.
Instead, the money will be taken from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, which has traditionally identified and funded road and transit projects in the region.
“Come election time, when you hear your delegates talking about how they tried to save you tax money by not voting for this, you know that they’re lying, because these taxes simply get passed on,” Letourneau said.
Del. Tim Hugo, who shepherded the original bill through the House, said there is still plenty of money left over in NVTA’s coffers.
“Taxpayers in Northern Virginia, they already pay enough taxes,” he told WMAL. “The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority is going to have a lot of money still for roads.”
Hugo said the NVTA will still have $266 million to spend next year, but that figure was disputed by NVTA Chair Marty Nohe, also a Republican Supervisor in Prince William County. He put the figure closer to $181 million, a $53 million loss from the original budget for Fiscal Year 2019.
“I don’t know where (Hugo) got that number,” Nohe said. “Congestion will continue to get worse…there will be some projects that will fall off the bottom of the list. The notion that losses will be small is ridiculous.”
Hugo said he was satisfied with the result, and was not worried about possible repercussions.
“(Local lawmakers) are not going to have to raise property taxes,” he said. “What they’re going to need to do is tighten their own belts.”
Hugo’s bill also mandates reforms and spending caps for Metro – namely, Metro’s funding from Virginia will be slashed significantly if its expenses rise more than three percent year-to-year. The bill also prohibits alternate members of Metro’s Board of Directors from participating in meetings, paring down a group that many have referred to as unwieldy.
Letourneau maintained the decision will bring about some serious consequences.
“Republicans lose when they don’t focus on the issues that people that we represent care about, and if you talk to anybody in Northern Virginia, number one is transportation,” he said. “You can be a good fiscal conservative, but people expect us to fix problems, and when we don’t fix problems, and when we take money away that will fix problems, we’re not doing what they sent us there to do.”
Copyright 2018 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO: Virginia Government)
