Between the dot.combust and the housing market collapse, Washington’s two largest jurisdictions enjoyed what seemed at the time to be a never-ending stream of revenue. Budgets in Montgomery and Fairfax counties exploded with generous benefits programs and gold-plated services that grew at a far greater pace than the local economies supporting them.
Only a few, largely ignored voices warned that a dangerous undertow would eventually develop in this tsunami of overspending, sending local governments crashing into the fiscal rocks.
Now that it’s happened, it’s important to understand why. The Washington Post’s thoughtful May 30 editorial, “A tale of two counties,” is a welcome — if belated — addition to the debate.
The Post correctly points out that “80 percent of all outlays are related to personnel,” which means that 80 percent of both Montgomery $4.3 billion budget and Fairfax’s $3.4 billion budget are spent on public employees.
When revenue dries up, private companies are forced to lay off workers. Public officials have an easier option: They just raise taxes. This works for a while, but not forever. Montgomery’s payroll rose 17 percent and worker benefits 75 percent over the past decade, so a pipsqueak budget cut of 3.5 percent now won’t save one of the nation’s wealthiest counties from “annual deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars as far as the eye can see.”
Nobody should be surprised that it Montgomery County is financial crisis. It has long been a one-party state, with ruling Democrats being all too eager to make deals with the public employee unions. And they pass fashionable, but expensive “progressive” measures like the recently enacted “carbon tax” that will drive even more businesses and taxpayers over the river.
But the Post failed to tell the whole Fairfax story. The regular presence of a Republican minority on the Board of Supervisors has helped contain many of the excesses like those afflicting Montgomery.
Nonetheless, Fairfax County employees’ benefits zoomed up 70 percent during the last decade — the highest increase of all budget items, while public schools spending went up 32 percent, or twice as fast as enrollment. Most of the extra money from doubled property taxes was spent on county workers’ health and pension benefits.
In uber-liberal Montgomery, past double-digit pay raises for teachers at triple the rate of inflation forced education costs 20 percent higher per student in the Maryland suburb than in Fairfax, even though test scores in both are roughly equivalent. Montgomery residents pay a 20 percent education surtax in addition to a local income tax not imposed on Fairfax residents.
Also unmentioned in the Post editorial was that Montgomery officials spend an estimated $243 million annually on services for illegal immigrants. That’s over and above the costs of jailing an undetermined number of foreign criminals because the county refuses to identify them and report them to federal authorities. That’s the cost of being a “sanctuary” jurisdiction that welcomes illegal immigrants, at taxpayer expense.
Fairfax finally started participating in the federal Safe Communities program, which identified 4,300 illegal immigrant criminals for deportation just last year, which makes Fairfax less attractive to illegals, compared with Montgomery.
Montgomery’s higher level of spending on people (not needed infrastructure) during the boom times — which the Post once praised as “compassionate” — is precisely what makes it more vulnerable than Fairfax now. But there’s nothing compassionate about raising taxes during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
The region’s two largest jurisdictions have indeed parted ways. Both are now reaping what their previous policies have sowed.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
