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Pulling
a Fast One
The
best parts of Gov. Warner's tax plan are measures
that the Republican General Assembly have already
approved. Most of the rest is questionable.
Gov.
Mark Warner intends to pull a fast one. He will
submit a budget to the General Assembly this month
that assumes his tax plan will be approved in full
at the 2004 session.
The problem for Warner is that existing law requires
him to submit a budget that meets the requirements
set by the legislature. One of those requirements is
that the projected general fund revenues must be
those revenues generated under existing statutes -
not laws Warner hopes to see enacted.
A governor can recommend any measure he chooses. He
has the authority to submit a budget based on an
additional $1 billion in revenues, but he is also
obligated under the law to submit a budget in the
form required by the General Assembly. This means
two separate budgets.
As a practical matter, the legislature must have the
ability to require the governor to prepare a budget
that satisfies its needs so that it can play its
proper role as a coordinate branch of government.
Because the governor is the chief executive and must
have the prerogative to oversee the agencies within
the executive branch, it would be inappropriate and
undoubtedly unconstitutional for the legislature to
direct the various agencies in the preparation of
their budgets.
The legislature's only option is to prescribe the
format of the budget.
Giving legislators a single budget that assumes an
extra $1 billion in revenues that may never
materialize is not Warner's only political ploy. He
has made his overall tax package more palatable by
including provisions that the legislature has
previously approved.
First, Warner vetoed legislation repealing the
estate tax last April so that he could incorporate
this very popular measure in his package.
Second, he takes credit for putting an end to the
car tax in 2008 hoping that the public won't realize
that Republicans had already enacted an automatic
trigger provision that would end the car tax in
2004.
Third, he takes credit for reducing the sales tax on
food by 1.5 cents without acknowledging that the
legislature had already enacted such a reduction.
The recent Mason-Dixon poll shows why Warner had to
resort to this political maneuvering. The
centerpiece of his tax package is the proposed
increase in the sales tax rate from 4.5 cents to 5.5
cents. Only 51 percent of the respondents favored
this hike. The creation of a new state income tax
bracket for taxable income above $100,000 was
opposed by 39 percent and supported by 38 percent.
The Warner plan as a whole received support from 35
percent. That increased to 56 percent support after
the pollster provided a "brief summary" of
the plan.
All of this polling was before opponents of Warner's
plan had begun to respond. The most likely scenario
is that, following Warner's barnstorming effort to
maximize support for his proposal, opposition will
begin to build.
Anti-tax opponents will surely note that support for
Warner's plan would drop like a rock if the car tax,
food tax and estate tax reductions were taken out.
Warner may take a double hit if the public senses
that he has unfairly taken credit for these tax
reductions even though they had previously been
approved by the GOP-controlled legislature.
What may ultimately doom Warner's tax plan is his
tactic of using as a battle cry the claim that 65
percent of Virginians will benefit from his plan.
Even before the anti-tax folks challenged that
claim, reporters had already blown holes in it.
--
December 15, 2003
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