Augusta County leaders are thinking about telling Richmond what it can do with its gun control. As their hands continue to be held out asking Richmond for money.
That’s the untold story behind the Second Amendment sanctuary nonsense that will be the focus of a Dec. 4 public meeting.
The county doesn’t want to enforce whatever comes out of Richmond in terms of gun-control legislation that is sure to come with Democrats in charge of both houses of the General Assembly.
Which is awfully ballsy for a county that can’t even pay its own bills.
Hate to say it this way, folks, but, yeah, we’re a welfare county, and without significant investments from those folks in Northern Virginia that a lot of y’all think should secede and form its own state, we’d go broke.
Don’t believe it?
OK, look at the local school budget.
State dollars account for 54 percent of what we’re spending on our schools in fiscal-year 2020.
Compare that to Arlington County, up there in the heart of big government NoVa.
State dollars make up 12.2 percent of the school budget there.
Seems like a healthy discrepancy there.
If all we did here was make up that difference, accounting locally for the 42 percent, we’re on the hook for another $37 million.
A year.
For context, everything else in the local county budget is costing $40.3 million in fiscal-year 2020.
You’re almost doubling the local budget if you don’t get that money from the state.
All y’all folks here with Tea Party license plates would call that a big government bailout if it wasn’t something that was benefiting us.
Funny, when you think about it, isn’t it?
Doing the math on what that means for you, local aggrieved county resident and taxpayer, accounting for the $37 million would require an increase of 53 cents on the local real estate tax rate.
You’re already paying 63 cents per $100 assessed value, so if your property is worth $200,000, you’re paying $1,260 a year in real estate taxes.
Fork over another $1,060, and you’re paying what folks in Arlington pay.
Otherwise, you’re one of those welfare cases, having somebody else pay your bills for you, and an ungrateful one at that.
Because you want the money, and want to complain because it comes with strings attached.
No matter that in Virginia these Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions are barely worth the paper that they’re printed on.
Virginia’s government structure operates under what is referred to as the Dillon Rule, which has it that localities only have powers expressly granted them by the Constitution and state laws enacted therein.
A resolution declaring Augusta County a “Second Amendment sanctuary” is a teen living in mom’s basement muttering under his breath about how he’ll play his loud music whenever he damn well pleases.
The teen in mom’s basement at least has the common sense to make sure the door is closed so mom can’t hear his nonsense.
It takes a special kind of entitled … arsehole … to tell somebody who’s paying your bills what they can do with it.
Not a good look there, Augusta County, is what I’m getting at here.
Column by Chris Graham
Share
Contributors
