“Adherence to men is often disloyalty to
principles.”
– John Taylor of Caroline
Tertium Quids is an independent, nonpartisan, issue advocacy organization that promotes legislative efforts to expand individual opportunity and free markets, while reducing the size, role, and cost of government in Virginia.
Through
grassroots education and mobilization, as well as direct contact with
local and state officeholders, Tertium Quids redefines the parameters of
the public debate in favor of individual liberty, dynamic
entrepreneurial capitalism, private property, the rule of law, and
constitutionally limited government.
Tertium Quids, Latin for "third way" or "third entity," is composed of activists across Virginia whose loyalty and commitment are to the founding principles of our republic, rather than to party politics.
It's updated regularly with insider news about Virginia politics.
Bill would put Virginia's budget and expenditures
online in citizen-friendly format
RICHMOND (January 8, 2008) - Putting Virginia's budget and expenditures online in a searchable database format will give citizens more
control over their state government, said a group of Republican and Democrat state legislators today at a press conference organized by Tertium Quids.
Virginia House and Senate legislators are sponsoring a bill this General Assembly session to put the state's budget, revenues, taxes, and expenditures on the Internet, in a format easily understandable and accessible to the general public.
The federal government and a number of states have already enacted measures to put their budgets online, enabling citizens and the media to look up details such as the name of a vendor, how much was spent on a particular item, the agency or program spending the money, and the purpose for the expenditure, among other data.
"Taxpayers should be able to easily access the details on how the state is spending their tax dollars and what results are achieved for those expenditures," noted Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-Fairfax).
"Today, there is a nationwide grassroots movement demanding budget transparency," said Kristina Rasmussen, director of government affairs at the National Taxpayers Union.
Transparency measures are a commonsense approach to better government, and are being promoted by legislators across the country, regardless of party affiliation. This legislation currently has bipartisan support in both the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates.
"This is nonpartisan legislation that's good for all Virginians. Every Virginian who pays taxes and fees to the government has a right to see how his or her money is being spent by public officials," said Del. Ben Cline (R-Amherst).
Virginia already has a few web sites which put the budget and certain expenditures online, but many of the numbers are aggregated and don't show enough detail to allow the public and the media - or even our
elected officials - to easily understand these numbers. These web sites often do not drill down to program-level spending, and they do not show what was purchased with the money.
"There is no reason for public expenditures to be kept hidden from the public," said John Taylor, president of Tertium Quids, the nonpartisan issue advocacy organization that promotes legislation to reduce the size and cost of government in Virginia. Tertium Quids has worked to gather support for the bill.
Citizens, legislators, bureaucrats, and the media would also be able to use the proposed site to identify wasteful spending, or products and services that could potentially be purchased less expensively through other sources. These savings could be given back to the taxpayers or shifted to fund other programs without resorting to the now-annual call for additional tax increases.
The state of Missouri has one of the better budget transparency web sites launched to date. It is found at http://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov. The extremely user-friendly and informative site allows users to search by agency, category of expense, contract, and vendor.
Lt. Governor Bill Bolling offered the following statement about Virginia's transparency bill: "I am pleased to lend my support to this legislation, which would require the Commonwealth to design and implement a budget web site that displays a clear, detailed, and understandable issue-level budget. While some budget information is currently posted online, citizens can only obtain very general information about budget expenditures, as opposed to detailed and specific information. By making more detailed information available to citizens, we can better enable them to understand how their tax dollars are being spent and influence the actions of their elected officials."
Freedom & Prosperity Agenda endorsers win
General Assembly elections!
(November 6, 2007) – Thirty-five candidates who supported Tertium Quids' Freedom & Prosperity Agenda rallied to victory in this November’s Virginia General Assembly elections.
The Freedom & Prosperity Agenda is a citizens' grassroots agenda for better state government that protects the properties, incomes, and futures of all Virginians. Eleven legislative planks were created in 2006 and have gained the support of people across Virginia and many state legislators. Three major planks have already been passed into law by the General Assembly, including eminent domain reform and the elimination of the dreaded death tax in Virginia.
Those celebrating wins on November 6 included four new legislators and 31 incumbents who endorsed the smaller, more fiscally responsible government agenda.
The new legislators are:
Delegate Brenda Pogge
Delegate Donald MerricksSenator Ralph Smith
Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel
The incumbent legislators who won re-election are:
Del. Rob Bell
Del. Kathy Byron
Del. Ben Cline
Del. Mark Cole
Del. Kirk Cox
Del. Jeff Frederick
Del. Tom Gear
Del. Todd Gilbert
Del. Frank D. Hargrove, Sr.
Del. Tim Hugo
Del. Sal Iaquinto
Del. Bill Janis
Del. Johnny Joannou
Del. Terry G. Kilgore
Del. Steven Landes
Del. Scott LingamfelterDel. Matthew J. Lohr
Del. Bob Marshall
Del. Sam Nixon
Del. John O’Bannon
Del. Chris Peace
Del. Bob Purkey
Del. Lacey E. Putney
Del. Robert Tata
Del. Lee Ware
Del. Thomas C. Wright, Jr.
Sen. Ken Cuccinelli
Sen. Stephen Martin
Sen. Stephen Newman
Sen. Mark Obenshain
Sen. Frank Ruff
More information on the Agenda can be found here.
Conservative leaders blast the 2007 Virginia
Transportation Plan
RICHMOND (August 14, 2007) - Grassroots groups came together at the Virginia Capitol today to blast the General Assembly's 2007 transportation plan and the politicians who crafted and continue to support it.
In a news conference organized by Tertium Quids, Virginia's fiscally-conservative public policy advocacy organization, conservative grassroots leaders gathered together publicly for the first time since the transportation bill was passed and leveled heavy criticism at politicians for the plan, which they say is fundamentally flawed as transportation policy, constitutionally flawed as legislation, and "stunningly inept" as a political strategy going into November's elections.
The Republican leadership in both the House and Senate - those who were architects and those who are continuing backers of the package - took the brunt of the criticism.
House Bill 3202, which authorized the plan, passed with bipartisan support in the General Assembly, but has received bipartisan disapproval at the grassroots level. An online petition has now collected more than 171,000 signatures of citizens who are demanding the repeal of exorbitant "abusive driver fees" and who pledge not to vote for "any Delegate or State Senator who voted for this bill, or for any Delegate or Senator who does not take action to repeal the sections of House Bill 3202 that inflict these exorbitant and unjust penalties."
However, more than just the high abusive driver fees component of the legislation came under fire at the news conference. The plan included tax and fee increases, unelected taxing authorities were created in Northern Virginia and the Tidewater region to raise revenues for transportation projects, and the Virginia Department of Transportation - already accused of wasting billions in taxpayer dollars - was given more money without measurable performance objectives for improving existing transportation problems.
"In a dishonest attempt to fool the voters of Virginia into thinking that they were not raising taxes, our legislators passed one of the worst pieces of legislation in Virginia's history. This contorted bill is a massive tax increase that will not pass constitutional muster," said Paul Jost, chairman of the Virginia Club for Growth. "It is time for new leadership in both houses of the General Assembly," he added.
Also rejecting the tax increases contained within the plan, Robert Dean, the cofounder and communications director of the Virginia Beach Taxpayer Alliance, stated, "HB 3202 penalizes folks who buy or build a home close to work by levying a grantors tax - an additional 40 cents per $100 - which, on the sale of an average Virginia Beach home, will cost the seller $1,800."
Dean concluded, "In a legislature in which the majority party is completely unable to field a leadership team, the Republicans are reduced to relying on more spending and higher taxes as the universal answer to every problem."
Patrick McSweeney of the Richmond law firm McSweeney, Crump, Childress & Gould, P.C. explained the legal bases for the constitutional challenge to the transportation legislation that his firm filed in the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond.
McSweeney outlined the claims in the lawsuit, stating that the legislation violated the provisions in the Virginia Constitution that (1) limit all statutes to a single subject, (2) prohibit the delegation of taxing power to unelected regional authorities, (3) prohibit the levying of impact fees that are not tied to the impact of a new development, (4) prohibit the issuance of either state or regional tax-supported bonds without voter approval, and (5) bar the assessment of civil redial fees that
are actually fines. His lawsuit claims the law is a violation of the due process, double jeopardy, and excessive fines clauses of the Virginia Constitution, and is a violation of the requirement that fines be paid into the state's Literary Fund (instead of being used for transportation, which was the plan's intent). Some of the claims are also based on the United States Constitution.
Criticizing the Commonwealth of Virginia's transportation policy for lacking any coherent goal or objective (ie. reducing congestion in high traffic regions), Dr. Ron Utt, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, asserted, "What we need is not more money for transportation in the commonwealth, but a performance-based Virginia Department of Transportation that utilizes quantitative measures of congestion relief and safety based upon the application of cost/benefit analysis to prioritize projects as well as to guide investment among alternative modes of travel."
John Taylor, organizer of the news conference and president of Tertium Quids and host of the Tuesday Morning Group coalition, reacted to comments made last week by a Republican leader in the House of Delegates who said that the citizens who are voicing opposition to the transportation plan "are the same anti-tax folks who oppose all progress."
"My goodness! In the last five years, the federal budget has grown by a trillion dollars. In the last decade, the Virginia budget has grown by 120 percent. In communities across the commonwealth, property taxes are growing by double-digit percentages. And yet, despite this explosion in spending and taxing, according to Virginia's politicians, the problem is that we do not have enough layers of government, we do not have enough layers of taxation, and we do not have enough unelected taxing authorities," responded Taylor.
"The 2007 transportation plan is fatally flawed for any number of reasons. It needs to be scrapped, and we need to start again with the understanding that our first transportation priority in Virginia is congestion relief."
Commentary on the 2007 Transportation Plan
by John Taylor
president of Tertium Quids and host of the Tuesday Morning Group coalition
Given at the August 14th grassroots news conference in the Virginia Capitol.
So far today, we have heard Pat McSweeney offer an analysis on the constitutionality of the Transportation Bill, and Dr. Ron Utt has offered a critique of HB 3202 from a policy perspective. In the next few minutes, I am going to analyze the legislation from the standpoint of its political implications.
Going into the last General Assembly session, the common wisdom in the GOP was that a transportation bill had to be passed to prevent Republicans from losing seats in Northern Virginia in the November election.
A deal had to get done. And a deal was done. So how has that worked out?
It is telling that as legislators campaign door-to-door this summer, the same legislators, who voted for the Transportation Bill only four months ago, are now trying to distance themselves from it - if they are not calling for a special session of the legislature to scrap House Bill 3202 in part, or entirely. That is because their constituents, or perhaps their former constituents, are verbally beating them around the head and ears for voting for the Transportation Bill.
It is also telling that a gentleman in Alexandria started an on-line petition, which to date has been signed by more than 171,000 people who pledge not to "vote for any Delegate or State Senator who voted for this bill [HB 3202], or for any Delegate or Senator who does not take action to repeal the sections of House Bill 3202 that inflict these exorbitant and unjust penalties."
However, what is most telling is the political tin ear of Republican leadership.
The Speaker, who was a prime mover behind this legislation, continues to stand by it even though it has badly divided his Party going into November's election.
Recently, another Republican leader in the House of Delegates dismissed opposition to the Transportation Bill by saying that the opponents of HB 3202 are the same anti-tax folks who oppose all progress.
My goodness. In the last five years the federal budget has grown by a trillion dollars; in the last decade the state budget has grown by 120%; and property taxes are growing by double-digit percentages in many locations around Virginia. And the people of Virginia are scratching their heads and wondering, "Now where is that, uh, progress?"
And yet, despite this enormous growth of government and spending at all levels, our political leaders think they have put their finger on the real problem that we face here in Virginia.
So who is the winner, politically speaking, from this legislative fiasco? I would say Governor Kaine and the Democrats are the clear winners. Eight months ago, political observers were saying the Republicans could lose the Senate this year. But the majority of the Republicans in the Senate vote with the Democrats already. Thanks to the unpopularity of the Transportation Bill, the Democrats have the incentive and an opportunity to focus their campaign resources on House races.
Going into the next General Assembly session, it is conceivable that the Democrats could have the Governor's mansion; effective, or actual, control of the Senate; the House of Delegates by a narrow margin; and a Transportation Bill for which the Republicans took the blame and the fall.
The 2007 Transportation Bill is a dramatic policy failure; we believe it is unconstitutional on a number of grounds; and it reflects a political ineptness that is truly stunning in an election year.
The grassroots in general, and the Republican grassroots in particular, needs to ask their political leaders:
"What Were You Thinking?"
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A Citizens' Agenda for Better State Government
A coalition of Virginia citizen groups and
legislators has come together to introduce
the Freedom & Prosperity Agenda – a
citizens' agenda for better state government
that protects the properties, incomes, and
futures of all Virginians.
These
11 planks will need the grassroots support
of people across Virginia to ensure that our
state legislators pass them into law. 1. Pass a Taxpayer's Bill of Rights
2. Rein in skyrocketing real estate taxes by basing them on the acquisition value of property
3. Eliminate the car tax
6. Allow parental choice in education
7. Create freedom and fiscal accountability for Virginia's public colleges and universities
9. Eliminate the War of 1812 tax (BPOL tax)
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4.
Eliminate Virginia's death tax
8.
Protect Transportation Trust Fund money from
being used
At a conference at the Omni Richmond Hotel, Professor Walter Williams discusses the economic implications of the Freedom & Prosperity Agenda and the need to control the growth of government.
Tertium Quids
7326 Early Marker Court • Gainesville,
Virginia • 20155
(703) 753-2268 • Fax: (703) 753-1900 •
JTaylor@TertiumQuids.org