Spotsy tax increase is bad for the economy

May 14, 2008 12:15 am

Christine Lynch got the heroes and villains all wrong in her April 30 letter to the editor ["Good job, Spotsy, on the budget and tax rate!"].

The economy is on a knife's edge, in Spotsylvania and across the country; the supervisors who voted to raise our property taxes made it harder for the county to recover from the economic hard times, and made us less attractive to would-be residents and investors alike.

It's difficult to see the economic cost of higher taxes, but the cost is there nonetheless.

Based on the conclusions of the Univer- sity of Kentucky's Center for Business and Economic Research, Spotsylvania's property tax increase results in a property value loss ranging from $120 million to $195 million.

So the four supervisors of whom Lynch thinks so highly (Gary Skinner, Hap Connors, Emmitt Marshall, and Benjamin Pitts) cost the county more than $100 million, and perhaps nearly $200 million, in lost property values. We're supposed to be grateful for that?

The real heroes here are Jerry Logan and Gary Jackson, who insisted upon an equalized rate and refused to vote for either the tax increase or the bloated budget that came with it.

(T.C. Waddy was good enough to vote against the tax hike, but he did vote for the ensuing budget.)

Sadly, they did not win the day, but next November, Supervisors Skinner, Pitts, and Marshall will be up for re-election--a perfect chance to replace the tax-hiking majority with one that understands the damage that comes from higher property taxes.

D.J. McGuire

Spotsylvania