From Jim Gilmore's live blog on Too Conservative yesterday.
In reference to the Car Tax questions. The car tax policy is very good for taxpayers and regular working people. This was a way of delivering real value to the pockets of working people. Before my Administration everyone paid giant and sudden taxes on the right to own an automobile. This was a severe burden on working people and families who were trying to meet their bills. It was good policy and remains good policy. The program was and is affordable. The fundamental question is, do you want to prioritize resources to give people tax relief or not? I chose to utilize resources for tax relief and kept my word.It is absolutely not true that the car tax cut was a burden on any locality. The whole point of the financial program was to reduce spending at the state level and to take that money and send it back to the localities 100% to reimburse them for the tax cut. The car tax cut cost the localities nothing. It is the state that had to reduce spending and send that money back to the localities. In fact, since many localities had trouble finding each and every tax payer, and the state sent back 100% of the tax cut, many localities made money.
This is all, of course, a complete bunch of b.s. First of all, even though the car tax was never fully phased out, it left the state in a huge fiscal hole -- a $6 billion deficit that Mark Warner had to save us from. Luckily, he took the measures needed, turned the deficit into a surplus, and righted the ship of state. No thanks to Jim Gilmore, obviously.
Second, to say that any of this was good for taxpayers or "affordable" is simply laughable. As "Not Jack Herrity" wrote on Too Conservative:
...how do you respond to the argument that your car-tax plan was really a tax increase in disguise, given the fact that the state has to spend nearly $1 billion each year to reimburse localities for their lost revenues? Far from a tax cut, the plan in reality shifted the fiscal burden from local governments to the state government. Was that the true intent of your plan?
Excellent question. Of course, there's no good answer to why Jim Gilmore shifted a huge fiscal burden from state to local government. Well, there's one reason: so he could run on the irresponsible, faux-populist "no car tax" slogan and win the governor's mansion that way. "Wildly irresponsible" is one of the nicest things I can say about that.
Finally, there's Gilmore's Big Lie that "the car tax cut was [not] a burden on any locality." Here's what the Virginian-Pilot had to say back on November 24, 2001 about the "no car tax" plan's effect on Virginia localities:
After a mere four meetings, Gov. Jim Gilmore's commission on tax reform has issued a half-baked plan that harms Hampton Roads. Actually, it would harm about a fourth of localities. Its centerpiece is a proposal that the car tax be truly eliminated. That's a terrific idea, one we've pushed for years. At long last, there is a consensus that Gov. Jim Gilmore's plan to have the state pay localities' car tax, so Virginians won't have to, doesn't work. It did not in fact eliminate the levy. And it created a huge annual state budget item, titled car tax. If nothing changes, the state might eventually pay more for the car tax than it spends on higher education, an absurd situation...If the state suddenly stopped paying its part of the car tax, one of two things could happen: Virginians would have to return to paying all of the tax, in which case they'd revolt; or localities might attempt to get by without the car-tax millions - except most are far too strapped for money to do that.
More from the Virginian Pilot:
The five biggest losers in the state under the Gilmore commission plan would be Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth. The biggest loser of all would be Chesapeake, at about $9 million a year.
Finally, there's this from the Republican Times Disgrace Richmond Times Dispatch (2/11/01):
Counties and cities with lots of expensive cars and high tax rates are reaping multimillion-dollar benefits from Gilmore's car-tax relief, while the mostly rural localities with low personal property tax rates are getting relatively little of the state's largesse, according to data released by the Department of Motor Vehicles last week. Since the state is reimbursing localities for taxes previously paid by local residents, the local governments aren't any better or worse off than they were before. But with the state using car-tax relief to distribute a budget surplus, officials in rural localities argue they are effectively being penalized for having low car-tax rates. Moreover, they say, the economic prosperity that fostered the budget surpluses missed many of the rural localities.
Yeah, and the reality of what the "no car tax" debacle has "missed" Jim Gilmore. This guy must live in "no car tax" la-la land.