A Fairfax County supervisor is predicting the county will have to raise taxes to deal with its ballooning $500 million budget shortfall.
“I don’t think it’s a question of whether we’re going to raise the tax rate, it’s a question of how much,” Sully District Supervisor Michael Frey, one of the board’s two Republicans, told The Examiner.
Frey says he doesn’t support a tax increase for the coming fiscal year but believes it’s going to happen, especially with uncontrollable costs like health care and fuel and the plodding nature of the board’s spending review, which has become bogged down in small-ticket items.
Agency heads have been ordered to draw up plans for trimming 15 percent of their budgets for fiscal 2010, which starts July 1, and present them to the board, but Frey says he believes that effort will fall short of covering the entire shortfall.
It’s a rare moment of fiscal frankness in a hotly charged political season, though Frey isn’t up for election this year. The board’s chairman, Gerry Connolly, is running for Congress. Braddock District Supervisor Sharon Bulova and Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity are expected to compete for the chairmanship if Connolly wins.
“Ultimately, it’s inevitable, we’re going to raise the rate,” Frey said. “Pat won’t say it, and Sharon won’t say it, and Gerry won’t say it. The rest of us are pretty much of an opinion that we won’t have a choice when we get there.”
Fairfax County supervisors passed a 3-cent tax increase in April that raised $68 million, the largest part of which went to the school system.
Lee District Supervisor Jeff McKay, a Democrat, faulted Frey for talking about tax increases so early, arguing it could send a message to agency heads to take a lax attitude toward rooting out budget cuts.
“I think there are a lot of cuts and reductions that can be made,” he said. “What our focus should be on right now is streamlining government.”
