Mr. Chairman and Members of the Board:

My name is Arthur Purves.  I address you as president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.  I am also the Republican nominee for Virginia’s 35^th delegate district.

The Taxpayers Alliance urges you to vote against higher taxes and fees and instead fund transportation from already-soaring tax revenues.

Between 2000 and 2007, Fairfax County real estate taxes increased at an average rate of ten percent per year.  Over the same period, household incomes were increasing only two percent per year.

Inflation-adjusted Virginia General Fund revenues have been increasing eight to ten times faster than population.

You are taxing parents out of the home.

In 2005 Wider Opportunities for Women published a survey of living expenses in the DC area. It found that for a Fairfax County two-parent family with two school age children, taxes and childcare accounted for nearly half of the family’s expenses.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 20 percent of women with children under 18 regard full-time work as the ideal. However, fifty percent of American women with children under 18 have full-time jobs.

The Fairfax County Department of Housing and Community Development says that subsidized housing is available for families whose income is at or below the County’s median income.  If half of Fairfax County families possibly need help paying for housing, high can they afford higher taxes?

Where are the already soaring county and state taxes being spent?

In the county, real estate tax increases give county employees higher raises and better pensions than taxpayers get.  While taxpayer incomes were increasing two percent annually, county employees were getting five-percent raises.  County employees get generous defined-benefit pensions while the private sector is losing theirs.

The job market knows this.  The schools have 12 applicants for each job opening while the county has fifty applicants for each job opening. 

Public-school and healthcare spending dominate Virginia’s soaring tax revenues.  For decades public school staff has been increasing five times faster than enrollment. The results?  According to the National Center of Education Statistics 60 to 65 percent of Virginia school children achieve below grade level. Mandated programs are poorly managed. Low-income children are not getting an education.   When the Alliance asked the Fairfax County school superintendent what percentage of Learning-Disabled children is successfully remediated before 12^th grade, he said he did not know.

Who is managing Medicaid?  Since 1986, the number of Medicaid recipients has increased five times faster than population.  Medicaid payments, adjusted for the Consumer Price Index, have increased twice as fast as the number of recipients.  The Alliance asked the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) to explain why Medicaid payments are increasing faster than enrollment.  Here is the answer from the DMAS Information Office: "We administer a Medicaid program, but do not normally conduct general research on health care cost inflation.  Therefore, we do not know what inflation factor would be best for your purpose, and we do not have answers to the other questions you asked.  We regret that we are not able to help you further."

We asked the General Assembly's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) the same question.  Their answer:  "We collect no data on Medicaid on any ongoing basis. Our annual spending report relies on the annual 'Statistical Report' from the Department of Medical Assistance Services."

If you do not govern school and healthcare budgets you will never have enough money for transportation.

Do not sell bonds.  Fairfax County sells bonds every year.  The result is that every year the county spends more on debt service than it raises from bond sales.  For that, the county has a $2.5 billion debt.  If Fairfax County had not sold bonds, it would have been able to spend more on capital projects and have no debt.  Pay as you go.

The Authority has identified $1,750 million of short-term transportation priorities, of which $750 million is for Metrorail. The remaining $1 billion will be needed for overruns on the Dulles rail project.

Government has never adequately funded maintenance for the existing rail system, and the community opposes high-density development at Metro stations.  Remember the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in London, Madrid, and Mumbai (formerly Bombay)?  Wouldn’t it be wiser, more affordable and more effective to build roads?

Finally, while the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted on the regional tax hikes, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has not.  We would like to ask the Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors why he has not had that board vote on these hikes.  We were told that Governor Kaine had amended the transportation bill to require board-of-supervisor votes.  Surprisingly, that language was deleted from the bill for Northern Virginia but left in for the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority.

In conclusion, if you manage school and health care spending, maintain equity between taxpayer and government raises and pensions, choose pay-as-you go funding instead of bonds, and choose roads over rail, you could more generously fund transportation than you will with the tax hikes being considered here tonight.

Thank you.

Therefore let it be resolved that:

Fellow Republicans:

I am holding the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which I’ve been invited to sign by my friends at the Americans for Tax Reform. I support the Americans for Tax Reform. However, as a long-standing anti-tax activist, I’d like to explain why I’ve changed my mind about signing this pledge. I’d also like to explain why I am not supporting proposals to cap real estate taxes or assessments.

The problem with these tax-cap pledges is that they allow candidates to dodge the crucial issue: where would they actually cut spending. Most tax increases are for third-rail social programs — public education, welfare, and healthcare — that most elected officials do not dare criticize.

We will never have any tax cuts until we have candidates who pledge to confront and oppose the waste in social spending. This is the pledge I make to you, and these are the pledges with which candidates should be presented.

Public-school staff has been increasing four times faster than enrollment. Yet the National Center for Education Statistics reports that sixty percent of Virginia’s public-school students achieve below grade level.

Welfare destroys families.

Government meddling has increased healthcare costs by fifty percent.

I would like to discuss these issues with the Democrat incumbent in the 35^th Delegate District. For that purpose I ask for your support in the Republican Primary on June 14, or if you live in the great 35^th District, I ask for your vote.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Arthur Purves. I am a candidate for the Republican nomination in the 35^th delegate district. I do not accept contributions from developers. In fact I accept contributions from no one. This means, among other things, that I will not have yard signs up and down Rt. 123.

Families want a house with a yard and a car. This is not sprawl; it is the American dream. Fairfax County, incidentally, has more trees now than fifty years ago, when it was mainly farmland. Making room for the American dream does require more highways in the outer suburbs, such as the Tri-County Parkway, Eastern Bypass, and the Techway Bridge over the Potomac, which I support. However, this would reduce the pressure for more development in Fairfax County.

Instead of concentrating office space in D.C. or Tysons Corner, commercial buildings should be distributed along our major corridors. Then many people would be able to work closer to where they live, and rush-hour traffic would be the same in both directions, reducing congestion.

I oppose extending Metrorail to Dulles. We cannot afford to maintain the existing rail system. Also, to be cost-effective requires the "Manhattanization" of rail stops, which is protested in Vienna and dreaded in Reston.

None of our state income taxes is spent on transportation. The General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission has reported that state spending for public schools has been increasing nine times faster than enrollment and budgets for four-year public colleges and universities have been increasing three times faster than enrollment — after adjusting for inflation. Transportation spending however, has not increased. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that only a third of Virginia’s public school students score at or above grade level. Colleges are turning out so few science majors that are eligible for security clearances as to jeopardize our national security. The transportation funding solution is to allow roads to compete with public education for state income tax dollars,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to tell about why we are running and to describe our platforms.

Just over a year ago, our Democrat governor proposed a $1 billion tax increase. The Republican-controlled General Assembly answered with a $1.4 billion tax increase.

I was confused. I had thought that Republicans represented lower taxes. Also, what good does it do to allegedly lower taxes by $900 million (the car-tax rollback) and then turn around and raise taxes by $1.4 billion?

But that is what happens when candidates cut taxes without developing a mandate to cut spending.

I am running to build a mandate to cut spending.

Of the $1.4 billion tax hike, $1 billion was allocated to public schools, even though the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) had been reporting that public-school spending had been increasing nine times faster than enrollment — even after adjusting for inflation.

The schools say they need these resources for, among other things, teaching the increasing number of low-income students. However, in 1984 the Fairfax County School Board set an explicit goal to reduce the minority student achievement gap. Since then Fairfax County Public Schools spending per student has more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation, and school staff has increased four times faster than enrollment.

The result? We still have a large minority student achievement gap. Do you think that more money will solve this problem? I don’t. I think the solution lies in a better curriculum, especially including phonics-based reading instruction.

About $100-$200 million of the $1.4 billion tax increase went to Medicaid. About one third of Medicaid provides free healthcare to low-income unwed mothers and their children. We also provide to unwed mothers subsidized housing, subsidized food, and subsidized childcare.

Since President Lyndon Johnson began massive anti-poverty spending in the mid-60s with his Great Society program, the percent of American children born out of wedlock has increased from seven percent to 33 percent. We’ve nearly destroyed the Black family: Two-thirds of Black children are born out of wedlock.

Now what happens to a low-income child whom the public schools do not teach how to read and who has been born out of wedlock? Well, a lot of the males end up in our burgeoning prison system.

About $30 million (estimate) of the $1.4 billion tax hike went to prisons. Virginia’s prison population has tripled over the past two decades — the result of ending parole.

About seven percent of Virginia’s population is Black males. However, sixty percent of Virginia’s prison population is Black males.

That is your tax dollars at work.

Now there is evidence that if the financial incentives for out-of wedlock births were phased out, which I believe they should — but done so gradually — the out-of-wedlock birthrate would still not decrease. There are still cultural incentives for promiscuity.

That leads me to suggest that we need to reinvigorate the concept of marriage. As originally defined, marriage safeguarded the power to create life. Today we’re making marriage something you do to get employee benefits.

The last time our schools were safe and drug-free was before the Supreme Court banned organized prayer and Bible reading. This is not a coincidence.

Several years ago, in a conversation with a Fairfax County newspaper editor, the editor stated that she did not understand why churches were not as effective as they used to be in molding the values of youth. I answered, "What good does it do to take your child to church when the biology class teaches that science has proven that there is no God?"

My objection to Darwinism is not that it contradicts the Bible; it is because it contradicts science and in particular the fossil record. The first animals, which were maritime animals, appear suddenly in the fossil record about 550 million years ago, and with no transitional fossils preceding them. This sudden appearance of animal life is universally referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion," because animals "exploded" into the fossil record during the Cambrian geologic period. This is not what Darwin predicted. Second, there was more diversity in maritime animals in the Cambrian Explosion than there is today. This also contradicts Darwin. Third, when paleontologists study gradual changes of fossils, they find that nothing much changes. This also contradicts Darwin.

My source of these findings is two prominent evolutionists. The late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist, in his book, Wonderful Life, spends the whole book telling how paleontologists concluded that there was more diversity among the Cambrian Explosion animals than there is today. Another famous evolutionist, Niles Eldridge, who is a curator at the Museum of Natural History in New York, devotes his book, Time Frames to trying to reconcile Darwinism with the observation that gradual change in fossils does not produce much change at all. According to Eldridge, Darwin "…viewed the fossil record more as an embarrassment than as an aid to his theory (p 196)."

Using our tax dollars to undermine youth’s faith in God is not a good idea. But using tax dollars to undermine youth’s faith by misrepresenting science ….?

I can now state my platform:

Good government is not something that is done by school boards, boards of supervisors, or general assemblies; it is something that is done by families.

Stated differently, if families did their job, state and local government would not have much to do — except build roads. One more example is gangs. At a recent Fairfax Committee of 100 meeting I learned that there is primarily one reason boys join gangs: lack of parental involvement.

James Madison said, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The secret to less government, lower spending and lower taxes is higher moral values.

You might say that this could never be achieved. So let me conclude with one of my favorite thoughts: "Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are probably right."

Please support my candidacy and vote for Purves on June 14.

Thank you.