When they meet Monday, Fairfax County supervisors are expected to use a surprise surplus to give county employees a 3.5 percent pay raise — more than double the 1.5 percent pay raise they were promised in July. But this would be reckless behavior on the part of elected officials who are supposed to exercise prudent management and fiscal restraint. There’s no indication that county government’s productivity has increased two percentage points during the past two months, so county employees have not earned a bigger pay raise. However, like their fellow government workers nationwide, they have become so accustomed to seeing their paychecks go up year after year that they now feel entitled to annual raises even when economic conditions and their own performance do not warrant them.
Although supervisors reduced the real estate tax rate from $1.09 to $1.065 per $100 of assessed valuation, most Fairfax homeowners have not seen a significant drop in their property tax bills. Arthur Purves, president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, testified in March that the tax rate would have to be reduced to 74 cents to offset tax increases approved during the housing bubble years. During that same time period, county employees’ salaries increased 21 percent and the cost of their fringe benefits ballooned 74 percent.
The money for the bigger pay raise is supposed to come out of a $104 million surplus the county budgeted and collected from taxpayers, but wound up not spending. However, County Executive Anthony Griffin told the board in July that tax revenues were still running below 2008 levels. Board Chairwoman Sharon Bulova co-signed an Aug. 10 letter sent to Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell from the leaders of eight neighboring jurisdictions citing the “fragility of the housing market” and requesting $60 million from the state’s $311 million surplus. At the time, Bulova told WTOP that Fairfax County was having “difficulties with funding education [and] public safety.”
Any jurisdiction that has so much trouble paying for basic core functions like education and public safety that it has to go begging to Richmond for help can’t afford to hand out any raises to its already well-compensated work force. Private-sector workers don’t get raises when company profits are down. Public servants shouldn’t expect pay raises when tax revenue is down either. And if there is an unexpected surplus, taxpayers should get first dibs.
