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Taxing power or not
This could be the year that the General Assembly sees fit to grant Virginia residents the power that 49 other states have to directly elect school board members. We strongly support such a change in state law, and we go one step further and endorse legislative initiatives that will give the boards the ability to enact local taxes to support their programs.
A good deal of space in the state’s newspapers has gone recently to the issue of taxing power, and schooL board members in other counties have said they would not run unless they get taxing authority.
We think that shows a lack of thoughtfulness. Do county sheriffs offices have taxing power? No. Are they still effective? Usually. The same can be said for other constitutional offices. They all administer budgets without being able to set tax rates. In fact, appointed school boards are in that very situation as the law stands today.
Richmond’s male-lawyer General Assembly has concocted the taxation issue as a specious smokescreen to maintain the current insider system of appointed school boards. Taxation is not the issue. The real question is whether local government should be directly responsible to their constituents—at the ballot box. With or without taxing authority, but preferably with, we hope in 1993 our school board members are popularly elected. We trust Virginia’s voters—does Richmond?
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