CAAR Blog

By Dave Phillips

The recent Republican primary between Hanger and Sayre sparked some thought about taxes.  For those of you NOT from the Charlottesville area, you just need to know the primary campaign of the challenger was focused on the fact that the incumbent had voted “yes� to a bill that raised taxes.  Translation for the Republican base: if you raise taxes you are evil.  In the end, the power of incumbency won re-nomination.

While this “raising taxes is evil� notion plays well to the conservative base, I do not think it plays as well to the general electorate.  Let me be clear: I am NOT saying that the general population supports raising taxes; rather, I think that most folks have a different reason for not supporting tax increases.  That reason is TRUST.  I do not think we trust that our taxes will be used properly and therefore we do not support tax increases.  That is vastly different than you are evil if you even think about tax increases because government, in any form, is bad.

I teach a lot about leadership and the foundation of leadership is trust.  Since very few people trust our government (local, state, or national) to spend their money wisely, our “leaders� are very hampered from doing their job.  We may trust the individuals, but we do not trust the institutions.  There have been too many $2000 toilet seats and $2 million dollar studies of the effects of coffee in the workplace that have been paid for with tax dollars to trust our government with our money.

Without trust, our elected leaders do not have the “right� to raise our taxes.  I think they know that, so instead they try to hide tax increases in fees, proffers, etc.  In addition, they make their budgets so hard to follow that they can not be questioned (or so I have been told by many politicians).  By hiding the facts of where the money is going, the trust we have in government is further eroded.

Several local elected officials have told me that people want the services, but they are not willing to pay form them.  I do not think that is the case.  I think most rational people are willing to pay for additional services, but they don’t believe that the increases are going to be used for the intended purpose.  If we could make people believe that a $.05 raise in the gas tax and a $.005 sales tax increase were going to be used to build roads (as opposed to hitting the general fund and being spent on $20,000 Christmas trees), they might accept the tax increase. 

It may be too late to have the public trust government spending ever again, but if it is possible, here are a few recommendations to repair the damage:

• Admit that things have been done wrong and ask for forgiveness.  This is the first step to re-building trust.
• Create simpler budgets that show how much we are spending on the big items like staff.  The school budget in Albemarle, for instance, lists staff costs in multiple different places to distract from the total cost. 
• Find 10 wasteful spending items, highlight them, and ask the public to discover other items.  Create a wasteful spending “rat-lineâ€? and offer a reward.  My local favorite is the very expensive and very small traffic circle at the Forest Lakes dam.  I heard it cost $180K when three stop signs would have served the same purpose.
• If you want to raise taxes, let the public know how much of each new tax dollar is going to priority items.  Heck, make sure we know what the priorities are in the first place.
• Admit that it is impossible to please everyone and warn folks that some people will not like the spending decisions.  Follow that up by not trying to please everyone.  Money should only be allocated to priority items.
• Ask the voters key questions through referendum.  For instance:  Are you willing to spend over a $million each year to buy development rights from large land owners in Albemarle?

Even if we actually did all these things, it may be too late to repair trust.  Once broken, trust is a very hard thing to re-build.  Will my ideas work?  I think so, but you’ll just have to trust me on that.