Cost to F.C. Taxpayers May Be Extra $1 Million

Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glen Youngkin has refused to provide the agreed upon Richmond share of a subsidy needed to keep Metro bus and rail services functioning in the region, which now confronts the City of Falls Church with the burden of an added $1 million as its share to make up the difference.
Deputy City Manager Cindy Mester explained the situation to the News-Press yesterday following the governor’s decision on Monday.

Hopes of reversing this action now lie with the special reconvened session of the State Legislature next Wednesday, April 14 when votes will be taken in efforts to override the governor’s veto and amendment moves.

If that session fails to get the votes needed to override the governor, then the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates both the Metro rail and bus public transit systems, will meet on April 25 to consider either asking regional governments to pick up the difference, or to drastically cut its services.

For the City of Falls Church, the City Council has already voted to advertise a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes an additional $1 million as its earlier-negotiated share of the effort to address WMATA’s current $433 million shortfall. Since the Council by law cannot now raise the tax rate (fixed at $1.22 per $100 assessed valuation, or a one cent cut from this year) before adopting its final budget for the next fiscal year next month, it would have to find somewhere else to get the second $1 million they’d need if all else fails.

Mester would not speculate to the News-Press on why the governor chose not to fund the agreed-upon Richmond share of the WMATA subsidy, many are speculating that it constitutes a form of “pay back” for the region’s refusal to go along with his now-dashed arena plan to move both the Wizards (professional basketball) and Caps (professional hockey) out of downtown D.C. to the Potomac Yards in Alexandria.
Falls Church’s representatives in the Richmond General Assembly, Del. Marcus Simon and Sen. Saddam Salim, have both agreed to go to bat in an effort to override the governor’s action next week, but no one is speculating yet whether the effort can be successful. Mester said, however, that as the House parliamentarian, Del. Simon told her that overriding an amendment, as contrasted to a veto, needs only a simple majority vote.

This session, Youngkin has set a new record for the number of bills he has vetoed coming from the narrowly-Democratic-controlled House. While most of the public attention has been on higher-profile issues – such as access to contraception in the wake of the overturning of Roe V. Wade, and Confederate heritage – the WMATA funding is one of the more substantial moves from the standpoint of citizen pocket books, and he also torpedoed a measure that would allow a local option for a one percent sales tax earmarked for new school construction.

(He did sign the charter amendment bill for the City of Falls Church that allows participants on volunteer City advisory boards and commissions to have primary residences outside the City limits.)

On contraception, he took the extraordinary step of canceling two laws passed to insure access to contraception by changing their wording from legal guarantee to a mere “expression of the sentiment of the legislature.”

He was also particularly soft on the Confederacy question, vetoing a ban on further issuance of state license plates commemorating the Sons of the Confederacy or Confederate Gen. R.E. Lee.

On the WMATA subsidy, Mester noted to the News-Press that when it looked like the transit authority would face a more draconian deficit of $750,000, it proposed remedies that included the shutting of 10 Metro rail stations and a reduction in bus service of 57 percent.

Mester said that for now, the City of Falls Church and its allied jurisdictions in the Northern Virginia region are “having to assume the worst” in terms of impacts on service and added local financial burdens.
The governor’s explanation for his proposed cuts stated that the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission can tap its $98 million set aside in 2022 for Covid relief if need be. However, as Mester pointed out, almost all of that reserve money has already been spent to make up for the Covid-induced reductions in revenue the last few years.

Meanwhile, in a late development yesterday, officials representing the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Board of Directors and the Metro Board of Directors announced they will convene the two bodies to launch a new joint initiative to develop a unified vision for transit service in the region. The meeting will be held on May 1. It will, according to a WMATA statement, “continue months-long discussions about how to efficiently provide, fund, and govern public transit, which is central to the region’s transportation, economic, and sustainability goals.”