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My name is Arthur Purves. I address you as president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.

The proposed sales tax referendum is not democracy in action; it is demagoguery in action. The claim that it will end traffic congestion is as dishonest as suggesting that the last school bond referendum would end overcrowding. Its passage depends on keeping the voters uninformed about the magnitude and waste of government spending.

The Northern Virginia 2020 Transportation Plan requires $700 million per year in new funding.

A penny increase in the sales tax would raise $200 million per year. If used to float bonds, a third of the revenue would be spent on interest, leaving $140 million per year for construction. If half of that goes to schools, then the tax hike would furnish only $70 million of the needed $700 million

In 1986, a half-cent sales-tax increase was dedicated to transportation, and it solved nothing.

Meanwhile, the current Virginia budget has $8 billion more than was required to keep up with inflation, population, and school and college enrollment since 1979. However, none of the extra $8 billion went to transportation. Why? Because of the irresponsible state policy to not spend income tax revenues on transportation.

So the extra $8 billion went to education, public safety, and welfare. About $1 billion of it went to local government "car taxes", which also fund social programs instead of transportation.

Public school spending per student in real dollars doubled over this period. The result? According to the National Assessment of Education Progress , 65 percent of Virginia children are substandard in reading and arithmetic.

Welfare and public safety spending deal largely with poverty. The inexorable growth of these programs demonstrates government's failure to reduce poverty. Moreover, government has no incentive to reduce poverty because to do so would mean laying off large numbers of government employees. Democrats have even less incentive to end poverty because low-income voters vote Democrat 9 to 1.

The public schools perpetuate poverty by not teaching reading. As social spending mushroomed, the number of Black children born into single-parent homes increased from 20 to 65 percent.  Bad zoning policies have all but eliminated unsubsidized low-income housing.

The transportation solution is to allow transportation to compete against wasteful social spending for income and sales tax revenue.  A tax hike will only perpetuate the social spenders' monopoly on these revenues and postpone much-need scrutiny of education and welfare spending.

Once again the Taxpayers Alliance will have in Richmond a lobbyist to remind the press and all legislators of these facts.

Updated January 7, 2002