Why Statehood for Northern Virginia ?
We've had enough of high taxes and low investment in our counties. Northern Virginia has 2% of the land area of Virginia, 25% of its population (see pages 4 and 5 of http://www.its.berkeley.edu/publications/localoptiontax/virginia.pdf for details), and pays almost 40% of the tax revenue of the Commonwealth.
And yet, only 46% of revenues collected by the Commonwealth of Virginia in our counties return here as expenditures. (See page 18 of http://www.virginia.edu/coopercenter/vastat/profiles/knappcoal.pdf for details.)
Roads and schools have reached the crisis point - and Richmond's only solution is to ask us to pay even more.
The problem isn't that we aren't paying enough - it's that Richmond is spending our money somewhere else. With a statewide budget of over $25 Billion per year (see http://www.dpb.state.va.us/Budget/vabud/vabud.cfm?vBiennium=2002-2004&vTable=O), the missing money each year comes to 21.6% of the total budget (54% x 40% x $13 Billion), or over $5 Billion a year.
That is an accounting scandal on the scale
of Enron!
In addition, we are now witnessing the collapse of services provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia cannot even collect money and issue auto licenses in a competent manner – just try visiting a Virginia DMV office, and waiting a couple hours out in the cold while it is snowing, and then waiting another couple hours inside, all for a transaction which takes 5 minutes. And the DMV isn’t the only place so affected.
We
cannot get roads built or upgraded: when it came time to spend $300 million
that the US Federal Government gave to the Commonwealth a few years ago, which
was intended to address problems on I-66, the legislature hijacked the funds
and used them to start expanding US 58 (which parallels the southern border) to
4 lanes, when 2 lanes are more than plenty for that road. When it came time to
make a new road between Rt. 28 and the Capital Beltway, the state fronted the
money, but insisted that it be a toll road. The Dulles Toll Road has been in
existence for 20 years now, and in the current year will have a surplus of $20 million; most estimates show that the road has
been paid for 3 or 4 times over, and the law of Virginia states that the tolls
are supposed to cease when the road is paid for. Have we heard of any plan for
this? The next time, when a road was needed between Rt 28 and Leesburg, the
Commonwealth wouldn’t even front the money, instead passing a new law so that a
foreign company could build the road and collect tolls. Now, what will they do
the next time a road is required?
We
are really in a condition of having been orphaned by the Commonwealth of
Virginia, except when it comes time to pay our taxes.
This has been going on for too long. It has become obvious that the Commonwealth of Virginia either cannot or will not address our concerns. Since this is the case, we ask that Virginia do what it did for Kentucky, what New York did for Vermont, and what Massachusetts did for Maine, and allow the peaceful and friendly separation of our counties into a state of our own.
We are the Northern Virginia Statehood League.
For more information, contact our Chairman: [email protected]