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The following is an open letter from Arthur G. Purves, president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, to a Fairfax County citizen panel that unanimously favored higher taxes to fund transportation improvements. The panel had heard presentations from numerous government and elected officials, but had not heard the anti-tax perspective. A draft of this letter was presented to the National Taxpayers Union annual conference in Washington, D.C., on June 21, 2003.

LETTER
FROM
ARTHUR PURVES
PRESIDENT
FAIRFAX COUNTY TAXPAYERS ALLIANCE
TO THE
BRADDOCK DISTRICT COMMUNITY TRANSPORTATION PANEL

June 24, 2003

"I am a Democrat because despite our failures, our missteps and our excesses, we know that waging a war on poverty does not mean fighting the individuals who are poor."
- -Virginia Governor Mark R. Warner, as quoted in The Washington Post Fairfax Extra, June 19, 2003, page 2.

To the Braddock District community transportation panel:

I respectfully disagree with your unanimous support of higher taxes to solve the area's transportation problems.

If higher taxes were the solution, then the problems would have already been solved.

First, let us define the term "tax increase."

A tax increase occurs whenever the taxes paid per individual go up.

A real tax increase occurs whenever the taxes paid per individual increase faster than inflation.

Therefore, if government spending increased no faster than population and inflation, individuals would not experience real tax increases.

However we have had substantial tax increases, because county and state revenues have been increasing much faster than population and inflation. Since the current Fairfax County Board of Supervisors was elected four years ago, it has raised the typical household's real estate tax five times faster than inflation. This occurred even though the current board chairman and a current supervisor who is now the Democrat candidate for chairman both stated four years ago that they would not raise taxes after the election.

Over the seven years since the "dot-com" bubble began in 1997, Fairfax County has received about $1 billion in real tax increases. The state of Virginia has received $18 billion in tax increases.

County real revenues and spending have reached new record highs each of the last four years, which is one of the county government's best-kept secrets.

State revenues, adjusted for population and inflation, while lower than at the peak of the dot-com bubble are still near record levels, which is another well-kept secret. The state's alleged $6 billion-dollar budget deficit was not a shortfall in year-to-year spending but a shortfall from overly optimistic revenue projections made during the dot-com bubble.

Almost none of the county's tax increases went to transportation. The county correctly regards transportation as the state's responsibility and therefore spends little on transportation.

Only ten percent of the state's tax increases since 1997 went to transportation. Most of the state's revenue increases were in income and sales taxes. However, it is state policy to not spend any income tax revenue on transportation. Similarly in a good year, 88 percent of sales tax revenues are also off-limits to transportation. Sometimes though, as happened last year, the state diverts to general government the sales taxes that had been earmarked for transportation.

Therefore the major revenue sources, income and sales taxes, are off-limits to transportation and are monopolized by social spending: public schools, public colleges, welfare, and prisons.

Last year the Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) published a review of state spending trends between 1981 and 2001.

The JLARC found that over that period, inflation-adjusted spending for public schools increased nearly ten times faster than enrollment. The inflation-adjusted budgets for public four-year colleges increased four times faster than enrollment. The number of Medicaid recipients increased four times faster than overall population. Medicaid spending, which is the state's fastest growing budget item, increased seven times faster than overall population. The state inmate population increased nine times faster than overall population.

However, transportation funding increased only slightly faster than population growth and much slower than the increase in vehicle miles traveled.

Similar trends are occurring at the county level. Since the current school superintendent took office in 1998, school inflation-adjusted spending has increased more than twice as fast as enrollment. Inflation-adjusted spending per student has increased 15 percent. Public school spending per student is at a record high.

This has been going on for decades. Over the past thirty years, Fairfax County Public Schools staff has increased nearly four times faster than enrollment and inflation-adjusted spending per student has more than doubled. County inflation-adjusted welfare spending per resident has nearly tripled. The county's jail inmate population has, like the state's, increased eight times faster than overall population.

Of the Fairfax County Public School system's 21,000 employees, only 13,000 are teachers. Of those, only 7300 are Kindergarten though 12th grade regular classroom teachers.

While staff size has mushroomed, school test scores remained stagnant, classes are overcrowded, and building maintenance is underfunded.

One thing has increased though. Since the late 80s, the number of expulsion cases sent to the superintendent has increased twenty-fold, from about 30 per year to over 600 per year.

In its all-important role of providing economic opportunity through education to low-income populations, public schools are a failure - as demonstrated by the chronic minority student achievement gap. This gap is largely due to the public schools' adamant refusal to use phonics-based reading instruction. The result is that children from homes that do not read still do not learn to read.

The main effect of welfare spending is to incentivize poverty by encouraging out-of-wedlock births. Since the advent of massive welfare spending under President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" in the 60s, the percentage of African-American children born out of wedlock has increased from 20 percent to 69 percent. (For Whites, the percentage has increased from 2 percent to 22 percent.)

Despite welfare reform, unwed mothers still qualify for subsidized housing, subsidized food, subsidized medical care, and subsidized childcare.

Social spending traps our most vulnerable citizens in poverty. Public schools fail to teach low-income children to read. Welfare destroys their families. Our busy jails then house the casualties of public school and welfare systems.

There is a similarity between today's welfare state and pre-Civil War slavery. Slavery destroyed Black families at the auction block. Today welfare destroys Black families with the subsidy check. Also, it used to be illegal to teach a slave to read. Just the ability to read, it was thought, would empower a person to be independent. Today, we are still not teaching low-income children how to read.

In speaking of the war on poverty, it is clear why Governor Warner felt compelled to acknowledge "our failures, our missteps and our excesses." However, the ones oppressing the poor are those who perpetuate a welfare state that traps people in poverty rather than providing them the dignity of independence.

Both the transportation crisis and our inexorably increasing taxes have the same cause: the spiraling effect of destructive social spending that creates the demand for even more social spending. There will never be enough taxes for the social spenders.

Both higher taxes and underfunded transportation are the result, not of inadequate taxes, but of out-of control social spending. Taxes and spending are at or near record highs. To fix transportation and to lower taxes, we must first stop using higher taxes to destroy families in the name of compassion.

Arthur Purves
President
The Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance
www.fcta.org

Updated July 4, 2003