Just heard that Del. Toscano’s transit tax bill, HB 2161, has met its death in subcommittee. According to Toscano, the bill cannot “come back this session.” Toscano lamented, “They didn’t even want to give the voters a chance to decide if they’re willing to pay higher taxes for transportation.”
No, David, they didn’t want a possible minority of residents raising taxes on a majority in this downward-spiraling economy. They also did not want to relieve from responsibility for making such an outrageous move, the local elected Democrat officials (with whom you conspired) who so cowardly favored this money and power grab.
Finally, David, if you’re such a fan of the voters deciding, are you willing to support the Ballot Initiave process here in Virginia? I didn’t think so…
May we dub him David “Taxcano”?
I guess the opportunity to get the students to vote this tax in has been delayed for a while (if it’s not sent to some other committee).
[…] Who could vote against such a commonsense proposition? Among others, your Delegate to the 57th district, David Toscano (or David Taxcano, as a creative contributor referred to him in a previous post). […]
It saves us a lot of work for now in trying to get enough voters to defeat the students and those looking for a new entitlement program.
Oh, well, our work is never done!
http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2009/05/rta.html
“Slutzky shared his calculations on how much revenue could be raised if a 5 or 10 cent tax was levied on residential and/or commercial property in the City and County. In one scenario, Slutzky said $4.2 million could be raised annually with a 5 cent tax (per $100 assessed property value) on a service district covering all urban commercial property. In a second scenario, if urban residential and rural commercial property was included in the district, Slutzky said $8.2 million could be generated annually.”
Funny how Gary O’Connell, Aubrey Watts (Director of Economic Development) and Craig Brown (city attorney) all counseled Council several years ago that there were other alternatives to forming an authority in order to accomplish their goals but were totally ignored. Nobody on Council had enough sense to ask what the other alternatives are. We already have a water and sewer authority, a solid waste authority and a jail authority suching the money out of our local pockets and the dodos are rushing along the road of a transportation authority. At least we got that Tibetan issue straightened out.
Here are alternate sources of taxes for the RTA: http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834519bec69e201157193a0c7970b-popup