Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 28, 1993 TAG: 9310280136
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To prove their point, they stacked books of federal and state regulations on a table on a knoll overlooking the Roanoke sewage treatment plant.
The point: Federal and state governments impose mandates on localities that cost millions of dollars, but then provide no money to pay for them.
All of the books of regulations, which would have been 10 feet high if they had been in one stack, related only to sewage treatment.
The state has required the treatment plant to be expanded and several major lines to be replaced, at a cost of $41.5 million.
Unlike the last time the plant was expanded, Roanoke and other localities in the Roanoke Valley will have to pay for the expansion with higher sewer rates.
The federal and state governments paid the lion's share of the cost of the last plant expansion, in the early 1970s.
Bowers said hundreds of unfunded federal and state mandates require local governments to raise taxes.
"Because they [federal and state governments] provide little, if any, funds for the mandates, taxpayers have to pay higher local taxes," he said. "Our goal is to reduce the burden on localities and local taxes."
At the news conference to focus attention on the mandates, City Manager Bob Herbert cited the treatment plant and the removal of asbestos from schools as examples of unfunded mandates.
City officials said there are 391 federal and state mandates affecting local governments in Virginia.
In Roanoke County, Supervisors Chairman Fuzzy Minnix said the cleanup of the old Dixie Caverns Landfill and a pay raise for teachers were unfunded mandates that have been costly.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the landfill to be cleaned up, at a cost of $5 million, he said.
In recent years, the state has mandated pay raises for teachers without providing the money, Minnix said.
The city's news conference was part of a nationwide effort Wednesday to call attention to the tax burdens on local governments. City officials said it was designed to help taxpayers understand the issue.
"Clearly, there's no such thing as a free lunch," Bowers said. "When it comes to government services, we all pay one way or the other."
But he said it's not fair to keep increasing taxes to pay for unfunded mandates.
For every dollar collected in taxes, 66 cents goes to the federal government, 20 cents to state governments and 14 cents to local governments, he said.
Bowers serves on a committee, appointed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, that helped organize Wednesday's events to call attention to unfunded mandates.
Herbert said that even President Clinton's new health care reform proposal contains an expensive new mandate. It proposes eliminating certain cost protections for health care premiums for local governments; this could cost local governments $20 billion above what businesses would pay for employee health care premiums.
"The problem with unfunded mandates is that they don't take into account whether they're needed in all communities, they strain local government budgets and they are put into place without local input," Herbert said.
"When it comes to federal and state mandates, if we're going to pick up the tab for lunch, at least let us do the ordering," Bowers said.
He urged city residents to write or call their federal and state legislators to tell them to stop passing unfunded mandates without local input and to consider the financial impact of regulations on localities.
Bowers said the federal and state governments should review their regulations to make them more flexible and allow localities to set priorities.
by CNB