Peter’s Take

Peter’s Take: A Tiff About TIF

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotAt the Nov. 16 County Board meeting, the board voted 4-to-1 to hold a public hearing on Dec. 14 to “consider establishment of a tax increment financing area and fund to help finance affordable housing initiatives in support of the Columbia Pike Neighborhoods Area Plan.”

The board should vote NO on this proposal in December.

Why is there such a tiff about this TIF?

As a county staff report explains, TIF is a financing mechanism that captures “the projected increase in property tax revenues created by… development… It redirects and segregates the increased property tax revenues that would normally flow to the General Fund so that they can be used for a specific purpose.”

The Board Should Defer A Final Vote Until After It Approves A General Policy on TIF

The same county staff report acknowledges that “the County Manager will be proposing a County-wide TIF policy as part of a comprehensive review of the County’s financial and debt management policies, last updated in 2009.” But, staff recommends that the board go ahead and approve the Columbia Pike TIF now because staff cannot imagine that the County-wide review will change staff’s mind about this TIF.

The staff has the cart before the horse.

TIF is a deservedly controversial form of financing because every time it is used it takes tax revenues away from the county’s general operating budget. TIF curtails the board’s flexibility to adapt to changing economic conditions. Given the new normal of Arlington’s budget situation, no further uses of TIF should be approved until after the comprehensive review is complete and the public is heard.

This TIF Is Highly Problematic

County staff is straining mightily to find a way to pay for an unrealistic goal that the County Board adopted last year: to preserve every single one of the 6,200 market rate affordable housing units defined in the Columbia Pike Neighborhoods Area Plan.

It was a big mistake for the County Board to adopt this goal before having a robust budget discussion with the Arlington community about:

  • the priority of this goal compared to all other community priorities
  • the benefits of this goal compared to its costs

This goal should not be shielded from the competition with other goals that takes place as part of Arlington’s annual operating budget review.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Arlington Budget Guidance, Part Two

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotThe County Board is scheduled to adopt its budget guidelines on Nov. 19. This column explains in more detail than last week’s why those guidelines should direct an increase in the budget share provided to Arlington Public Schools.

The main reasons are: school enrollment has been rising, while it’s getting more challenging to deliver a 21st century education, and the APS share of the total budget has been slipping.

The combination of these three things happening simultaneously continues to reduce the relative share of educational resources that APS used to have.

School enrollment rising

APS projects that enrollment is expected to continue to grow in FY 2015 by 793 students. This represents an increase of about 30 percent since FY 2007. The financial impact of this enrollment growth for staffing alone could exceed $8 million in FY 2015. Other costs related to this growth (relocatable classrooms, furniture, textbooks, etc.) are likely to add $3 million.

Educational challenges up

APS must honor its commitments to bring instructional time up to the same level and provide the FLES program at all elementary schools. As a percentage, special education enrollment has not changed significantly. But, the severity of the needs of APS’ special education students has been increasing, especially in the autism area. These educational priorities require significant additional resources.

APS share slipping

While there have been occasional one-time, special add-ons in county transfers of funds to APS from FY 2007 through FY 2014, the overall trend of these transfers has been downward in relative terms. Thus, over that period:

  • County revenue provided to APS has grown 32.5 percent, but locally-generated revenue retained by the County has grown 38.6%;
  • Over the same period, the APS budget share has declined from 46.7 to 45.6 percent.

APS also helps to generate Arlington’s tax dollars. A recent report by Dr. Michael Walden concluded that APS’ high and improving academic performance contributes to the Arlington economy:

  • Arlington County residential property values are between $2.7 and $4.7 billion higher than they would have been without academic improvement;
  • These increased property values contribute annually between $27 and $47 million more in property tax revenues than would have been received without academic improvement.

APS’ share of the operating budget should be restored to the level that properly reflects Arlington’s historic commitment to public education.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Budget Guidance for Arlington’s County Manager

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotThis is the time that the Arlington County Board generally adopts guidelines for the County Manager to use in preparing the County’s operating budget for the next fiscal year. As a point of reference, you can review the guidelines the Board adopted last year here. ARLnow.com readers should review last year’s guidelines as context for this column.

As I have written in earlier columns, to accommodate the new normal of Arlington’s budget environment, Arlington needs to move now to the type of core services approach to budgeting used in other jurisdictions. Based on that reasoning, the budget guidelines the County Board should adopt this year ought to differ substantially from those it adopted last year.

Here are the guidelines that the County Board ought to provide to the County Manager in preparing the next Operating Budget:

“The County Board directs the County Manager to prepare an FY 2015 budget that realistically reflects current economic conditions. The County Board believes that Arlington faces substantial economic challenges, and will continue to face such challenges for the foreseeable future. A significant slowdown in the growth of federal government spending and troubling increases in commercial office vacancy rates are among these challenges.

“To accommodate this new normal in Arlington, the FY 2015 budget must give priority to spending on core government services such as the public schools, public safety, and maintenance of existing infrastructure. We must continue to ensure a safety net for those in need.

“In developing her Proposed FY15 Budget, the County Manager is directed to:

  1. Ensure that the budget provides for long-term financial sustainability.
  2. Present a balanced budget that eliminates any projected county revenue/expense shortfall using expense reductions to eliminate no less than 75 percent of any shortfall and tax increases to eliminate no more than 25 percent.
  3. Change the county/school revenue sharing allocation reflected in the FY 2013 budget (54.2 percent county/45.8 percent schools) by increasing the schools’ share from 45.8 percent to whatever higher percentage is needed to fund all reasonably anticipated enrollment increases, continue to raise achievement for all students and narrow achievement gaps between various groups of students, expand the FLES program to all elementary schools, and otherwise ensure that we are providing the best education we can afford.
  4. Preserve the County’s AAA/AAA bond ratings.
  5. Fully fund all debt, lease and other contractual commitments. Eliminate duplication and inefficiencies.”

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Free Clinic Still Vital to our Safety Net

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotAs I wrote in a column a few months ago, it’s important every so often to take a step back and recognize organizations that provide vital services in our community. In that earlier column, I profiled AFAC—the Arlington Food Assistance Center.

Today, I’d like to highlight the Arlington Free Clinic.

AFC’s mission is to provide free, high-quality medical care to low-income, uninsured Arlington County adults. AFC relies on private donations and volunteer services. In the wake of passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the natural question arises: is there a continuing need for AFC and the services it provides?

The answer definitely is: yes.

AFC has spent a considerable amount of time evaluating the potential impacts of the ACA on AFC’s work. AFC has reached these important conclusions:

  • many of AFC’s current patients now will be able to get health insurance due to passage of the ACA,
  • but a significant number of AFC-qualified Arlington adults will remain uninsured, and
  • the number of AFC-qualified Arlington adults will still exceed AFC’s resources to provide care for them.

In light of these conclusions, AFC has decided to:

  • provide existing AFC patients information about the ACA, and connect them with assistance to help those eligible to get insurance,
  • transition some patients from AFC to new health care providers, and
  • provide care to more uninsured, low-income Arlingtonians whom AFC previously had not been able to serve.

More details about the impact of the ACA on AFC are here.

Those Arlington residents whom AFC will continue to serve will have access to a full range of medical services provided on-site within AFC’s primary care setting. Other services, including diagnostic procedures, are provided by AFC’s community partners. The care available through AFC includes:

  • Primary care
  • Specialty medical care in anesthesiology, cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, ENT, gastroenterology, hematology, nephrology, oncology, ophthalmology, optometry, orthopedics, pathology, podiatry, psychiatry,  pulmonology, radiology, rheumatology, surgery and urology
  • Women’s health including annual screening for cervical cancer and access to free mammography for women aged 40 and above
  • Mental health
  • Physical therapy
  • Pharmacy services
  • Diagnostic testing
  • Patient education programs in breast health, diabetes care, nutrition, asthma care, osteoporosis, and oral health
  • Patient support groups

There are a variety of ways in which you can learn more information about AFC.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: New Spending Needed to Increase High School Capacity

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotAs reported by ARLnow.com and the Sun Gazette, the Arlington Public School staff recently made a  presentation on high school capacity. The presentation asked the School Board to issue a public statement that the looming need to increase capacity at Arlington’s comprehensive high schools CANNOT be solved by building a new high school. Why not? It’s way too expensive.

How refreshing to see this degree of sensitivity to capital project costs!

The APS staff report does make it clear, however, that additional capital spending will be required to address high school capacity needs. That’s not a surprise. Excellent progress on many educational fronts continues to attract more and more families and students to Arlington and to APS.

The new high school capacity report further underscores the need to set priorities among all Arlington capital projects. As the Sun Gazette high school capacity story warned, “with both the school system and the county government … approaching their self-imposed limits on bond debt — options are further constrained.” We can’t afford every project.

Since both school system and county government capital projects ultimately are funded by the same tax base, we need to move rapidly toward a more unified, integrated and rigorous system of setting capital spending priorities for all capital projects. Such priorities should NOT be selected within artificial silos in which county projects on the one hand and school projects on the other hand are only evaluated and prioritized separately within such silos.

As I have written previously, the highest priority should be given to expenditures on core government services. Since public education is one of the most critical of those core functions, Arlington’s public schools deserve the highest priority for capital spending. Arlington’s new Wakefield High School building is an excellent example of a recent APS capital project that stuck to the basics. The new Wakefield building has received strong community reviews.

The Arlington Mill Community Center is another recent Arlington County capital project that has been widely praised.

By unfortunate contrast, extravagant and wasteful spending on non-essential design elements has characterized several other recent Arlington County projects like the Aquatic Center, the Clarendon dog park, and the $1 million Super Stop.

As we begin planning for next year’s critical revisions to Arlington’s Capital Improvement Plan, let’s learn from our successes.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Gov’t Shutdown Hurts GOP in Arlington

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotIn a May column written immediately after Virginia Republicans nominated their extreme statewide ticket, I predicted that ticket would be a turnoff for many Arlington Republicans. Prior to the federal government shutdown, this GOP extreme team more than fulfilled my predictions.

The Arlington GOP was unable to recruit anyone to run alongside the extreme team for any other elected position on the Nov. 5 Arlington ballot: no state Delegate candidates, no County Board candidate, and no School Board candidate. All of that was before the national GOP engineered the government shutdown.

By overwhelming margins in two recent independent polls, the public has assigned primary blame for the shutdown to the national GOP — not to President Obama or national Democrats. This common-sense conclusion is very likely shared by even more lopsided margins in Arlington — and not just because Democrats in Arlington have won recent general elections with roughly two thirds of the vote.

Compared to those polled nationally about the shutdown, Arlington has a much higher number of voters in private sector jobs that depend—directly or indirectly—on the federal government. Many Republicans hold those Arlington private sector jobs. A lot of those Republicans have lost money or been furloughed because of the loss of federal contract revenue attributable to the shutdown.

If the Republican candidate for Virginia governor had been a moderate with a long record as a problem-solver and bi-partisan consensus-builder, he credibly could have distanced himself from the GOP-led shutdown disaster. He could have minimized the damage to his candidacy in our community.  Alas for Arlington Republicans, that is not the case.

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, Arlington Republicans instead find themselves saddled with Ken Cuccinelli at the top of their ticket. He is a candidate who has embraced for years the most extreme faction of the Republican Party that:

  • engineered the federal government shutdown, and
  • remains defiant and proud about that “accomplishment.”

On Election Day this year, the effects of the shutdown still will be quite fresh in the minds of Arlington voters. While Ken Cuccinelli has preached the gospel of job creation, he has practiced the politics of job destruction.

All three extreme GOP statewide candidates — Cuccinelli, Jackson, and Obenshain — will suffer at the polls because of the Cruzification strategy pursued by their national Republican leaders.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Arlington Should Lead Now on Ethics Reform

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotLast week brought the welcome news that the Arlington School Board has put out for comment a new draft policy to set stricter limits on the circumstances under which School Board employees and elected School Board members may accept gifts. Congratulations to the School Board for taking the lead in this area.

It’s time for the Arlington County Board to do the same.

The current Arlington County Ethics Policy is much too vague and weak. On the subject of gifts, for example, the current Arlington County policy urges its employees to “ensure that no favors, gifts, gratuities or benefits are received for actions taken.” This provision simply urges county employees not to violate current Virginia criminal law. Arlington County can do much better than this.

As months of scandalous disclosures about Star Scientific, Gov. Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli have demonstrated, current Virginia criminal law has become a national laughingstock because of what it allows rather than what it forbids. Should Arlington County be satisfied simply by telling its employees: “don’t be criminals?” No.

Nor should the County Board wait around to find out what the Virginia legislature might do next year in this area. Like the School Board, the County Board should start to work now because defining higher ethical standards correctly will take some time.

Fortunately, the County Board does not have to reinvent the wheel. There are models available to use as a starting point. For example, the office of the New York State Comptroller has created a model code of ethics for municipalities.

Even though the New York model code was created for local governments in that state, almost all of the issues it addresses are generic issues that should be addressed by a county in Virginia as well. Examples of such issues include:

  • Gifts (Section 17)
  • Recusal (Section 6)
  • Investments (Section 8)
  • Board of Ethics (Section 18)

As I wrote in an earlier column about Gov. McDonnell: just because something might not be illegal, doesn’t make it ethical.

Arlington County can and should set higher ethical standards for its employees and elected County Board members than those set by Virginia’s criminal laws.

It’s time to get started.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: On the NRA’s $500,000 Ad Campaign

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotLast Friday, the Washington Post revealed that the National Rifle Association has committed to spend half a million dollars in negative advertising against Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia Governor’s race.

This NRA announcement prompted McAuliffe to say that he is “a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. I’m a hunter. I own guns. … There are certain individuals who just should not own a gun.”  Cuccinelli responded that no new laws are needed because “Virginia has excelled at ‘screening out people with mental illness from gun purchases’ and ‘prosecuting people who attempt to buy guns illegally’.”

Whatever it might have stood for decades ago, the NRA today is simply a trade association of gun manufacturers who want to sell as many guns as possible. The NRA and other extreme opponents of reasonable gun laws are fond of the slogan, “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” This NRA slogan is worthless in helping us decide whether new laws are needed to reduce gun violence.

We need to scrap the NRA’s slogan, and use our own common sense: a combination of guns and people kill people.

If we could do away with the worthless slogans and extreme partisanship surrounding this issue, it would be easier for folks to sit down together and develop reasonable solutions. We need to keep an open mind to solutions including, but not limited to, new laws that address the role of both people and guns in violent gun deaths.

Advocates of stricter gun laws also ought to be supporting more:

  • mental health screening,
  • mental health treatment, and
  • effective sharing of mental health data

Gun rights advocates also ought to be supporting reasonable:

  • restrictions on sales of weapons designed for modern warfare,
  • restrictions on bulk sales of massive amounts of ammunition, and
  • universal background checks prior to gun sales

Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard shooter, worked at a series of consulting assignments around the DC Metro area, including assignments in Arlington. Aaron Alexis purchased the gun he used in Lorton, Va..

We all have a stake in what should be done to prevent tragedies like those at the Navy Yard, Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech.

The next tragedy could easily happen in Arlington.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Questions Remain About Arlington’s Cash Surplus

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotIn a column last month, I urged Arlington County to explain the enormous growth in the size of its cash surplus relative to its operating budget.

Deputy County Manager Mark Schwartz took the time to write a detailed response. Mark deserves kudos for providing it.

Mark’s response presents some explanations that make sense, but provides other material that is cause for significant concern. Since Mark has referenced too much material to address adequately in one column, I’ll discuss today two aspects of that material: general cash management policy and the transportation capital fund.

General Cash Management Policy

The material Mark presented reveals the lack of a coherent, consistent policy for when, how, and under what circumstances taxpayer-funded cash ought to be accumulated in, and then spent from, the multiple different types of Arlington County funds he described.

Some funds have very specific purposes, accumulate cash for a short time, and then spend that cash on the purposes specified. That’s good, but the county ought to have a policy to do that for all its cash surplus funds.

By contrast, Arlington Public Schools does have a coherent, consistent cash management policy that is designed to apply to all its cash surplus funds: At APS, the fund balances don’t just sit there and grow indefinitely.

Transportation Capital Fund

Arlington County’s Transportation Capital Fund (TCF) is an example of a fund that is accumulating taxpayer cash without any adequate explanation for how and when the money will be spent.

Moreover, the following critical TCF details are missing:

  1. the expected cost of each of the individual projects specifically mentioned;
  2. how the total cost of all projects specifically mentioned compares with the total amount of money accumulated in the fund;
  3. the financing plans for any shortfall between the total cost of all projects specifically mentioned and the total amount in the fund, and
  4. how the county proposes to pay for other known and desired, but unmentioned, projects that are eligible for payment out of the fund.

Frankly, this lack of transparency with respect to the TCF suggests one of two things:

  1. lack of effective planning, or
  2. a cynical attempt to hide the county’s true intentions for deploying scarce taxpayer dollars.

Either way, this is not good financial management.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Time to Finish the Job

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotIt’s time to finish the job of providing Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES) programs at all Arlington public elementary schools.

As the Sun Gazette reported last week, parents at the elementary schools that currently lack FLES demanded again at the Sept. 12 School Board meeting that the School Board follow through on its repeated prior commitments to provide FLES. The School Board Chair re-affirmed that doing so is an APS priority. Parents who support finishing the job now are asking supporters to sign a petition.

This is a matter of simple fairness. Why is it taking so long?

The case for FLES in our globally competitive 21st century was made and adopted by APS years ago. It’s an excellent case, supported by many peer-reviewed studies that go back decades. The problem certainly is NOT that FLES lacks sufficient merit or that APS has not thoroughly studied FLES.

As I wrote in an earlier column, the major part of the problem lies with the County Board’s unnecessary spending on projects like the Aquatics Center, Artisphere, the Clarendon Dog Park, and the Columbia Pike streetcar. In the new normal for Arlington’s budget environment, the County Board’s improvident spending on such projects has made it harder for the School Board to complete its justified commitment to FLES.

Another reason the School Board may have been having trouble finishing the FLES job is that many Arlington teachers believe they should receive pay raises to make up for raises they didn’t get during the Great Recession, and that such raises should have a higher priority than completing the implementation of FLES. That’s a false choice.

Both these teachers and the parents who want the School Board to finish FLES are being constrained by the County Board’s misguided spending. It’s time for the teachers and the parents to join forces and tell the County Board to change its budget priorities.

Both Arlington’s residential and commercial real estate taxpayers are the common source of funding for all of these competing demands. Our public money is both fungible and finite across the entire spectrum of school and county spending.

Providing all of Arlington’s elementary school children with better opportunities to learn one language in addition to English deserves a higher priority than it has been getting.

Let’s finish implementing FLES now.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Mark Herring for Attorney General

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotAs also has been true in this year’s election for Lieutenant Governor, the race for Virginia Attorney General has been overshadowed by the scandals engulfing current Governor Bob McDonnell and current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

In the AG race, the contrasts also are stark. The Democratic candidate, Mark Herring, is a moderate Democrat.

Herring lives in Loudoun County where he has a private law practice, working in several legal specialties, including land use and zoning, civil litigation, and municipal law. In 1999, he was elected to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. He served as Chairman of the Land Use Committee, and was a strong advocate for economic development and transportation improvements.

First elected to the Virginia State Senate in 2006, Herring has worked to bring technology-based economic development to the Northern Virginia region, and has been a leader in making both state and local governments more accountable.  He has led efforts to keep dangerous new synthetic drugs out of circulation.  He has advocated for legislation to target those who attempt to commit financial scams against seniors. He has sponsored and passed legislation to strengthen penalties for acts of domestic violence.

Herring’s sensible platform as our next Attorney General includes initiatives to keep Virginia’s families safe, defend civil rights, protect consumers, and safeguard our natural resources.

By contrast to Herring’s mainstream record and goals for the Attorney General’s office, his opponent, Mark Obenshain, has a far-right-wing, extreme record:

Obenshain sponsored a bill in 2009 that would have made it a crime to fail to report a miscarriage to the police. [SB962]

Along with Cuccinelli, Obenshain co-sponsored so-called personhood legislation. The Associated Press explained that under this legislation, “by giving embryos the constitutional protection of personhood from the instant of fertilization, abortions of all types would become illegal.” [Associated Press, 2/6/2007] The legislation Obenshain and Cuccinelli co-sponsored also would have banned some forms of birth control.

Obenshain voted against workplace protections against discrimination for gay and lesbian Virginians in 2013, 2011, and 2010. [SB701, SB747, SB66]

Electing Mark Obenshain as Attorney General is equivalent to giving Ken Cuccinelli a second term in that office.

The choice is clear: Mark Herring for Attorney General.

Peter Rousselot is a former member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

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