Virginia House GOP maneuver sets up difficult floor vote for Dems on income tax bill

Va. House panel sends income tax bill to floor

RICHMOND, Va. — A procedural move by Virginia House Republicans on Tuesday forces House Democrats to vote this week to either approve former Gov. Tim Kaine’s $2 billion income tax increase or spurn the budget their national party chairman advocated.

The GOP-dominated House Rules Committee voted to send a bill that would boost the state income tax rate by 1 percent directly to the House floor.

The move circumvents the 15-member House Finance Committee, which is supposed to hear all revenue measures, and puts the bill on track for a decisive vote Thursday or Friday.

“This is too important for a handful of us to decide,” House Republican Leader H. Morgan Griffith said, trying to keep a straight face. “Should 15 of us be making the directional turn signal for all of us?”

In the austerity budget Kaine submitted on Dec. 18, he proposed ending the state’s $950 million annual reimbursement to cities and counties for money they lost in a 12-year-old phaseout of the local property tax on personal vehicles.

Cutting that $950 million yearly expense eliminated nearly half of the $4 billion revenue shortfall the state expects for the new budget lawmakers must pass this year for fiscal years 2011 and 2012.

But without those yearly reimbursements, local governments would incur deep deficits. So Kaine proposed legislation separate from his budget bill that substitutes proceeds from the income tax for the car tax reimbursements made directly from the state general fund. To qualify for a share of the income tax revenues, however, cities and counties would have to forever repeal their car taxes.

The House’s Republican majority — bolstered by a net gain of six seats in November’s elections — and new Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell had both warned that they would kill any general tax increase.

Kaine argued that after nearly $7 billion in budget reductions in 18 months, cutting an additional $2 billion in government services would destroy the state safety for the disabled and indigent and threaten many core state services. So he called for the tax increase anyway, and Del. Robert Brink, D-Arlington, introduced it.

House Speaker William J. Howell, the Republican who heads the Rules Committee, assigned the bill to his committee, ensuring that it goes to the floor and forces a difficult, recorded vote by all House Democrats.

House Democratic Leader Ward L. Armstrong of Henry County and Kenneth Plum of Fairfax, two of the five Rules Committee Democrats, were the lone votes against sending it to the floor. They tried unsuccessfully to have the bill passed by.

“Why did the speaker feel it was important to assign this bill to Rules rather than Finance,” Armstrong asked Howell.

“It was my feeling that this was such an important bill that we want to send it to the floor as soon as possible,” Howell said.