Editorial

It’s kind of like the Electoral College. After every U.S. presidential election, the irrational and unfair nature of the Electoral College system leads to new outcries calling for its abolition. So it is with Virginia's antiquated and structural unfair so-called “Dillon Rule.” At the conclusion of every legislative session in Richmond, new cries for its repeal are heard, and usually in the northern part of the state.

For those who aren’t aware, Virginia has ways of running its government that are very unique among the 50 states of the union. They are throwbacks to a 50-year era of autocratic political control by Gov. Harry F. Byrd’s infamous Byrd Machine. Byrd (1887-1966) was governor from 1926-1930 and a U.S. Senator from 1933 to 1955. He consolidated conservative control of the Democratic Party in the state and stridently resisted integration and organized labor. Under his command, everything was run top down, centralized out of Richmond, and a profound legislative advantage was given to rural areas of the state that persists to this day. Among many other remnants is the fact that the mechanism for collecting state taxes in every local jurisdiction is state-run. That is, the Treasurer, Commissioner of the Revenue and Sheriff in each jurisdiction are state, and not local, officers.

Another Virginia anomaly is its one-term governor system, maintained to keep any politician from getting powerful enough to challenge the Byrd Machine that propped him up in the first place. There’s no other reason for why the policy exists, but like the Electoral College, it is hard to get rid of because whichever party is out of the Governor's Mansion at any given time wants to keep it.

But the worst legacy of the Byrd era is the persisting role of the “Dillon Rule,” established by an Iowa supreme court chief justice in 1873 and adopted by many states, including Virginia, in the early 1900s but since abandoned by almost all. It establishes that unless a local law is explicitly permitted by the state, it is unconstitutional. It further says that if there is any doubt about whether or not it is in compliance with state law, it is also unconstitutional. Byrd resisted “home rule” reform efforts against this that swept the nation in the early 1900s to cling tightly to the rule until his death. When a reform of the Virginia constitution was proposed after his death in 1969, an opportunity to remove the “Dillon Rule” was squandered.

Now, in particular, it is killing Northern Virginia as dominant currents of extremist conservatives in the southern and rural-dominated House of Delegates take delight in trashing Northern Virginia initiatives, like the photo red light traffic safety policy, transportation funding, gun safety or attempts to add sexual orientation to anti-discrimination policies. Meanwhile, they cling to a tax structure that fleeces Northern Virginia disproportionately and returns a fraction of what it takes.

We concur with those who insist something must be done to fix this problem. Heck, we'd call to secede, if it could work.