Thomas Jefferson Planning District Legislative Program

2005

Thomas Jefferson Planning District Legislative Program

Representing the Local Governments of:

Albemarle County

City of Charlottesville

Fluvanna County

Greene County

Louisa County

Nelson County

December 2004

Jeri Allen, Chairman

Harrison B. Rue, Executive Director

David C. Blount, Legislative Liaison

THOMAS JEFFERSON PLANNING DISTRICT

2005 LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

Positions of TJPDC, Charlottesville City

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa and Nelson

CAR TAX REIMBURSEMENT

TRANSPORTATION

STANDARDS OF QUALITY FUNDING

COMPREHENSIVE SERVICES ACT

PUBLIC SAFETY

TAX STRUCTURE REFORM

LAND USE AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

HOUSING

LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRUCTURE AND LAWS

ALBEMARLE FACTS______

Area: 726 square miles

Population: 88,400 (2003 provisional estimate)

County Seat: Charlottesville

Incorporated Town: Scottsville

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $65,629 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $.76 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $4.28 per $100 assessed value

CHARLOTTESVILLE FACTS______

Area: 10.3 square miles

Population: 39,500 (2003 provisional estimate)

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $49,154 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $1.09 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $4.20 per $100 assessed value

GREENE FACTS______

Area: 157 square miles

Population: 16,600 (2003 provisional estimate)

County Seat: Stanardsville

Incorporated Town: Stanardsville

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $51,802 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $.84 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $5.00 per $100 assessed value

FLUVANNA FACTS______

Area: 290 square miles

Population: 23,800 (2003 provisional estimate)

County Seat: Palmyra

Incorporated Town: Columbia

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $50,308 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $.68 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $3.70 per $100 assessed value

LOUISA FACTS______

Area: 511 square miles

Population: 27,400 (2003 provisional estimate)

County Seat: Louisa

Incorporated Towns: Louisa, Mineral

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $48,478 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $.70 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $1.90 per $100 assessed value

NELSON FACTS______

Area: 474 square miles

Population: 14,800 (2003 provisional estimate)

County Seat: Lovingston

Median Adjusted Gross Income: $41,234 (2002)

Real Estate Tax Rate: $.72 per $100 assessed value

Personal Property Tax Rate: $2.95 per $100 assessed value

ACTION ITEMS

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities urge the governor and legislature to correct the local fiscal crisis created by the state’s omission of $270 million in reimbursements to localities for the Personal Property Tax Relief Act (PPTRA) in FY06.

Actions taken by the General Assembly during its special session last spring cap the amount of state reimbursement to localities for the Personal Property Tax Relief Act (PPTRA) at $950 million beginning in tax year 2006. However, to save more than a quarter billion dollars for the state, the legislature changed the PPTRA from a calendar year to a fiscal year program, eliminating all state reimbursements in the final half of FY06 by budgeting only $680 million for FY06. This $270 million shortfall is expected to create severe budget and cash flow problems for localities that bill for the tax in the first half (which includes Albemarle, Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson).

Some state officials and legislators contend this is a cash management issue rather than a revenue or budget issue, and that the state will pay its share of FY06 bills early in FY07. However, localities are concerned about gaping holes in their budgets in fiscal year 2006, cash-flow problems continuing to recur, and various implementation challenges, such as supplemental billing and delinquent tax bills, during the calendar year to fiscal year transition. Also, localities are required to apply two personal property tax rates, one to values below and one to values above $20,000, a scenario that likely will be difficult for taxpayers to comprehend.

We urge the governor and legislature to provide the necessary funds in the FY06 state budget to correct this problem. Should the money not be appropriated, the state should allow localities to regain authority to assess and collect personal property taxes, which was lost when the act was created in 1998. The legislature also should address implementation issues that will challenge local governments in the near future.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities urge the state to address funding shortfalls in transportation construction while continuing to provide secondary road and street maintenance funding on top of construction dollars. The state should establish additional revenues for Virginia’s transportation infrastructure, including consideration of increases in state transportation-related taxes and fees, without heavy reliance on the general fund or debt.

Transportation is expected to be a primary focus of the 2005 legislative session. This past year, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) trimmed the annual six-year plan by over $1 billion after consideration of additional transportation revenues was dropped during the protracted budget negotiations. Despite continued documentation of the need to fund a declining transportation infrastructure, no reliable and long-term transportation funding solutions have been approved. Complicating matters is the fact that construction dollars increasingly must be used to support maintenance activities, and debt service continues to impact the flow of dollars, since much of it comes “off the top” before funding allocations are made.

We believe the state should direct its funding efforts at all transportation modes. It should account for the needs of urban areas where public transportation continues to be very important, the traffic demands placed on fast-growing localities and the ongoing improvements necessary on rural, secondary roads. These improvements are vital to our region’s ability to respond to local and regional congestion and economic development issues.

We support the CTB’s ongoing efforts to align transportation revenues with expenditures and to coordinate transportation and land use planning. We support funding for the TransDominion Express with stops at Oak Ridge and Charlottesville. We endorse the use of modern roundabouts in lieu of conventional intersection design and allowance of signal replacement funding for construction of roundabouts.

Finally, we request that the state recognize that creation of any local transportation district serve as a mechanism to enhance accompanying public and private dollars for projects in accordance with local priorities, rather than to replace that funding.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities believe the state should fund its share of the realistic costs of meeting the Standards of Quality (SOQ) and that existing education programs should not be eliminated to fund SOQ requirements.

Our localities appreciate General Assembly action this past year to address shortfalls in education funding, and encourage continued efforts to address critical items such as the SOQ, teacher salaries and technology initiatives. We continue to believe that additional state revenues are necessary for the Commonwealth to meet its responsibility for funding education, as enumerated by the 2001 JLARC recommendations and the 2003 Board of Education (BOE) initiatives. As the state moves forward in implementing the higher staffing levels included in those BOE proposals, it is important to recognize that higher staffing levels already are in place in many school divisions because of local support for education far exceeding the state-required local minimum contribution.

Accordingly, while making these efforts, the state should not require any maintenance of local effort other than that associated with the SOQ’s current, required local effort. A maintenance of effort not connected to the SOQ would punish localities that voluntarily appropriate locally generated dollars beyond the required minimum in an effort to sustain high quality education for all students. Further, when apportioning education funding, the state should consider the effects on localities of such factors as land use taxation, revenue sharing and poverty.

We continue to urge state financial assistance with school capital needs and remain concerned about the continued raiding of the Literary Fund, historically used to provide low interest loans for school construction, to pay for teacher retirement.

Finally, as our school divisions make progress toward meeting the Standards of Accreditation (SOA) accountability goals for both schools and students, and face increased costs for complying with accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, any reductions in state education funding would hinder the efforts being made.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities support full funding of the state pool for the Comprehensive Services Act (CSA), with allocations based on realistic anticipated levels of need, and a cap on local expenditures for serving a child through CSA.

Since the inception of the Comprehensive Services Act over a decade ago, there has been pressure to hold down costs, to cap state costs for serving mandated children, to increase local match levels and to make the program more uniform by attempting to control how localities run their programs. During this time, state and local costs of residential and non-residential mandated services have been steadily increasing. Initial state appropriations for CSA fall short each year, challenging the state to find its share of funding and forcing localities to request supplemental state appropriations.

Many localities across the state have been exhausting their annual base allocation in only a few months. We believe this distinction between base and supplemental budgets should be eliminated and that caps be placed on local expenditures to combat higher local costs for serving mandated children. We support enhanced state funding for services for non-mandated children and believe that the categories of populations mandated for services should not be expanded unless the state pays all the costs.

We encourage the state to be proactive in making service providers available, especially in rural areas, and to support local and regional efforts to address areas of cost sharing among localities by procuring services through group negotiation.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities encourage state financial support, cooperation and assistance for law enforcement, criminal justice activities, emergency medical care and fire services responsibilities carried out locally.

We encourage the state to make Compensation Board funding a top priority. The Compensation Board should fully fund local positions that fall under its purview. It should not increase the local share of funding constitutional offices or divert funding away from local offices, but increase money needed for their operation. Local governments continue to provide much supplemental funding for constitutional officer budgets, which were shortchanged in recent years.

We support continued state funding of drug courts. Local funding has aided this court-supervised alternative to jail or probation that has proven it saves dollars (cost is $3,000-$5,000/year compared with $19,000/year for adult incarceration) and lowers recidivism (rates in the single digits since inception of the local drug court).

In addition, we support the following:

Shared funding by the state of the costs to construct and operate regional jails. However, we do not believe the state should operate local and regional jails. Also, the state should not adopt language that would disallow exemptions from the federal prisoner offset and should maintain the per diem payment to localities for housing state-responsible prisoners.

Continued state funding of the HB 599 law enforcement program.

Continued state funding for services under the Pre-Release and Post-Incarceration Services (PAPIS), Community Corrections and Pretrial Services Acts.

Legislation that will enable localities to install and operate traffic light signal photo-monitoring systems.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities believe that changes to Virginia’s tax code should not reduce local government revenues or restrict local taxing authority. The state should broaden the revenue sources available to local governments, rather than capping, removing or restricting those sources, taxing authority or user fees.

We oppose unfunded state and federal mandates and the cost shifting that occurs when the state fails to fund mandates or reduces or eliminates funding for state-supported programs. This cost shifting reduces the ability, especially in our rural localities, to meet local needs and forces our citizens to bear tax and fee increases (which our localities have implemented) to pay for such programs and services. State funding reductions for state-required services/programs should be accompanied by relaxation of the state requirement.

While we recognize that financing government programs and projects should be a partnership between the state and localities, with our limited ability to raise funds and our sometimes-stagnant revenue streams, we strain to meet services that are mandated by the state or demanded by residents. The state should not reduce local government revenues or restrict local taxing authority; rather, it should equalize the revenue-raising authority of counties with that of cities and consider sharing a portion of state income tax revenues with localities. It also is critical that the state budget be provided “on time” to localities, so that they can have assurances about expected revenue streams.

Any changes to the telecommunications tax structure should preserve local government revenues, including those for E911 services, and guarantee that localities receive growing tax revenues from emerging and advancing industries and services. The state should not divert any such new revenue to address future budget shortfalls.

We believe the state should consider paying all costs for fully funding certain state programs carried out at the local level, such as constitutional officers. We request that the state undertake long term planning in establishing VRS rates so that localities are not burdened with significant year-to-year rate changes.

Legislative Position of TJPDC, Charlottesville,

and the Counties of Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson

The Planning District’s member localities oppose any preemption or circumvention of existing local authority to regulate land use and encourage the state to provide local governments with additional tools to manage growth.

Current land use authority often is inadequate to allow local governments to provide for balanced, sustainable growth in a manner that protects and improves quality of life. This has posed particular challenges for fast-growing localities, which often need additional powers to shape and mange growth. Unfortunately, in recent years, the state has limited local governments in their efforts to manage growth by enacting provisions that reduced local authority to implement the comprehensive plan or to regulate land use.

Further, infrastructure costs associated with new developments are borne by all taxpayers, rather than by those bringing about the need for the expenditure, thus straining our ability to pay for these costs of growth in a time of declining revenues. Accordingly, we support legislation to allow localities to adopt ordinances that include provisions for determining whether public facilities are adequate (“adequate public facility,” or APF ordinances) to support services required by a proposed development. Such ordinances require that proposals for new residential projects provide payment for or be timed to coordinate with construction or upgrade of public facilities necessitated by the new development.

Specific Recommendations:

The state should preserve existing authority for localities to regulate land use.

We support enabling legislation that would provide local governments with various additional tools, such as impact fees, flexibility for proffers, adequate public facilities ordinances and transfer and purchase of development rights, to manage growth.

We support 1) dedicated state funding to acquire, preserve and maintain open space and recreation lands, including directing available federal funds to localities, and 2) the full authority to generate local dollars for such efforts.

We endorse legislation to enable localities to enact scenic protection and tourist enhancement districts.

The Planning District’s member localities recognize economic development and workforce training as essential to the continued viability of the Commonwealth. We support policies that closely link the goals of economic development and workforce development and that result in an increased standard of living for all residents.

We support an Economic Development Strategic Plan for the Commonwealth that more clearly defines responsibilities of state and local governments and includes new tools for local governments to use in attracting economic development opportunities.