Stafford County BOS Chairman Reveals True Intention on Holdback Funds
At a recent meeting of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, Chairman Mark Dudenhefer (R-Garrisonville) made a stunning statement. He suggested that Republicans could look to make further cuts in the adopted FY’11 by withholding a percentage of county funds (a.k.a. holdback funds).
With the 7 percent holdback, they will have an opportunity to actually affect that budget by impacting that holdback of funds.
He made this statement in reference to Supervisor Susan Stimpson’s (R-Falmouth) statement that she was going to vote against the budget, since she wanted even deeper cuts. He suggested that this was still possible, even after passage, by not appropriating a portion of the holdback funds.
This is in sharp contrast to prior board precedent with regards to the purpose of holdback funds. The intent of holding back a percentage of funds appropriated to the county government and schools has been to avoid the situation where expected revenue is revised downward at the mid-year and it no longer supports the same level of budget expenditures. To me, it certainly makes good fiscal sense to hold back a certain percentage of funds, pending a mid-year review, although I would have required more justification on why 7 percent; however, I am deeply opposed to using this holdback as a way to affect adopted budgets outside of the normal budget process. This smells of politics at its worse.
This also presents significant problems for county government and the school system. They are essentially operating, based on their adopted budgets. If funds are cut surreptitiously, this will create a huge budget nightmare. If Stafford Republicans wanted to address specific budget items, they should have done it within the constraints of the normal budget process. Dude, say it isn’t so?!
If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Stafford Republicans, in approving the FY’11 budget, also voted to withhold the reappropriation of educational federal stimulus funds – pending accounting reports verifying the exact amount of unspent funds in FY’10. The fact is that Stafford Republicans were already provided this information by the school system. You see the information they were already provided doesn’t fit within their preconceived notions. They want to claim that this money was local money and not federal stimulus money, so that they can further cut the school budget by arguing that if they didn’t spend this money last year than they don’t need it this year.
As I previously mentioned, the school system froze expending federal stimulus funds in FY’10, during the FY’11 budget formulation process, to protect against a looming budget cliff that they identified due to significant declines in state and local revenues. The local decline in revenues were not only because of the struggling economy, but was actually exacerbated by Stafford Republicans fiscal irresponsibility.
By withholding these federal stimulus dollars from the school system, Stafford Republicans are potentially jeopardizing continuing a recent step increase given to teachers and other school employees into the next school year. Why you ask? The federal stimulus dollars were included as part of the instructional budget for next year. This instructional budget includes the large majority of employee salaries. If Stafford Republicans were not to reappropriate the $11 million or so of federal stimulus, not only would this raise be in jeopardy, but also significant teacher layoffs would be necessary.
It’s past time that Stafford Republicans stop playing political games with our teachers and children as their pawns! Enough is enough already.
Stafford Democratic Committee Elects Kandy Hilliard Chair
At today’s Stafford Democratic Committee (SDC) Reorganizational Caucus, former Aquia Democratic Supervisor Kandy Hilliard was elected Chair of the SDC. As the outgoing Chair of this committee, I believe that Kandy will continue the tremendous progress we have made over the last two years and will be one heck of a Chair! Congratulations to Kandy!
Now, here is a little about Kandy. In 2001, she was elected to the Stafford County Board of Supervisors. While on the board, she served as the Region 7 Director on the Virginia Association of Counties Board of Directors.
She was also appointed by Governor Mark Warner to serve on the Local Government Advisory Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program and then was reappointed by Governor Kaine. Kandy played a key role in helping to preserve the Crow’s Nest Peninsula. As Kandy explained today,
As Aquia District Supervisor, I worked hard to get $30 million in Virginia Resource Authority funds to purchase the Crow’s Nest Peninsula, one of the last remaining bird and wildlife sanctuaries on the eastern seaboard.
She also helped to spearhead a County-wide roadside litter removal effort which cleaned up more than 50 miles of major roadways each year. They picked up trash from Quantico on the north end to the Falmouth Bridge on the southern end and up Garrisonville Road and Rt. 17. Given the makeup of the current Board of Supervisors within Stafford County, this experience may prove to be invaluable!
Kandy is also the current Chair of the Friends of the Rappahannock Executive committee.
Elected along with Kandy were Laura Sellers as Senior Vice-Chair; Noreen Crowley and Linda Berkoff as Vice-Chairs; David Kerr as Secretary; Bruce Iosco as Treasurer; Bobby Crisp as Sergeant-at-Arms; and Marvin Wagner as Parliamentarian.
Del. Pollard Named to McDonnell Transition Advisory Group
Del. Albert Pollard (D-99) did his part. He endorsed Creigh Deeds for Governor prior to the Democratic primary in June and appeared with him at multiple events in Fredericksburg and the Northern Neck. But the dust has settled and the voters of the 99th district have spoken: Pollard for Delegate and McDonnell for Governor.
Pollard, who has a lifetime 96% rating from the Virginia League of Conservation Voters and is a recipient of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Legislator of the Year award, has been named to Bob McDonnell’s Transition Team Advisory Group for Natural Resources.
Delegate Albert C. Pollard, Jr., was recently appointed to Governor-elect McDonnell’s Transition Team Advisory Group for Natural Resources.
The news which first appeared on the Washington Post website is an effort of the incoming administration’s efforts to reach across the aisle.
“It’s an honor to be appointed to Governor-elect McDonnell’s transition team,” said Pollard. “At this point in our nation’s history, we cannot waste time with petty partisan politics. Future generations will not care if the Chesapeake Bay was cleaned by one party or another – only that the job was done.”
Now maybe Speaker Howell will wise up and put Pollard on the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee where he belongs?
Forbes: The Federal Stimulus is Working
How long before the wingnuts get a hold of Steve Forbes and force his namesake (of which he is editor-in-chief) to print a retraction?
Forbes is as loyal a conservative Republican as you will find. This was Mr. Forbes a few weeks ago when he endorsed Doug Hoffman for Congress in NY:
Under the Democrat Congress and White House, we’ve seen runaway spending, more bail-outs and attempts to pass government run healthcare and union power grabs like Card Check. We’ve seen federal tax dollars used to promote abortion on demand and we’ve seen more of our freedoms put in jeopardy.
The full statement is the standard “Democrats=Satan” talk that could have come from the mouth of Beck or Palin.
Back to the Forbes magazine article; this analysis from Oxford Analytica (a group started by a former member of the Nixon administration) looks at the good and the bad from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and concludes:
Despite its flaws, the stimulus package has helped underpin recovery and prevented even more savage job losses than those that have occurred. However, this observation (based on counterfactual conjecture about how much worse conditions would have been without the plan) is unlikely to be politically salient for Obama if unemployment remains high ahead of the November 2010 mid-term elections.
And just for good measure:
The summer 2009 “cash-for-clunkers” program intended to encourage new car purchases–and appears to have succeeded.
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