Last spring, the Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga noted that some of America’s most prosperous counties were in financial distress, largely due to unsustainable pension and health benefits lavished on employees. Even New York’s Nassau County, one of the richest in the nation, was a “financial wreck … thanks to staggering employee bills,” he wrote, warning about a “new era of paying more for local government and getting less, in which even prosperity feels like austerity.”

That new era has already begun in Fairfax County, which is projecting a massive $274.3 million budget shortfall over the next two years. True to form, taxpayers will once again be asked to make up the difference.