As the 2025 General Assembly session approaches, Fairfax County leaders are hoping for the best while bracing for the worst when it comes to unfunded mandates and associated costs handed down from Richmond.
“We can’t continue to sustain all these state operations that are dropped in our lap,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said at a meeting of the board’s legislative committee on Tuesday (Oct. 15).
The board gathered to continue refining proposed policy positions heading into the General Assembly session, which opens Jan. 8 and is expected to run 46 days.
County leaders bemoaned the need to augment state funding with local tax dollars for everything from education to courtroom safety. In another perpetual goal, they plan to work again on loosening limits placed on Virginia counties when it comes to tax powers.
Current state tax policy is “outdated, antiquated and needed to be reformed,” Claudia Arko, the county government’s legislative director, said.
At the committee meeting, some supervisors seemed leery of being too explicit about their desires, at least before state legislators begin their session.
“We generally, historically, have kept it broad,” Braddock District supervisor and legislative committee chair James Walkinshaw said of the tax-policy portion of the wish-list.
As a so-called Dillon Rule state, localities across Virginia — including even Fairfax County, with its 1.1 million residents — have virtually no inherent powers unless they are expressesly granted authority by the state government.
While that modus operandi has rankled local government leaders across the Commonwealth for more than a century, state leaders of both parties have shown little inclination to fundamentally overhaul the system. The best local officials seem to be able to hope for is winning small victories where they can.
The biggest concern for Fairfax County leaders heading into 2025 seems to be K-12 public education funding, as more affluent regions of the Commonwealth have to pick up more of the overall tab.
As the county board contemplates a meals tax and other options for boosting local revenue, in part to compensate for a habitual shortfall in state education funding, Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn predicted that the debate over K-12 funding “is going to dominate everything” in the next General Assembly session.
Supervisors also raised concerns around funding for public safety and the justice system. They voiced continued frustration with local jails having to house inmates who, by law, should be moved into the state prison system instead.
“It’s a lot cheaper for the state to keep them here … [but] they shouldn’t be here,” Mount Vernon District Supervisor Dan Storck said. “We do not have the services [to accommodate longer stays] in our county jail.”
The state also isn’t adequately funding the salaries of county government courthouse personnel, including attorneys, according to McKay.
“We are picking up the tab,” he said. “This is chronic, it is not new, it is getting worse.”
The draft legislative-priorities package put before the committee runs 18 pages, which Walkinshaw said was, to him, too long.
“I’m going to take a red pen to this,” he said.
The committee will discuss the package further at its Oct. 29 meeting before it goes to the full Board of Supervisors for adoption on Nov. 19.
