THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 22, 1995 TAG: 9501220053
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Car dealer Ted Linhart was about to plunge into a bowl of Rice Krispies Friday morning when the conversation turned to Gov. George F. Allen's attempt to scale back state government.
``All you have to say is `tax cut' and you'll have a lively discussion around here,'' Linhart said, motioning with his spoon to about 80 members of the Bon Air Rotary Club gathered at a suburban shopping mall cafeteria.
These Rotarians - business owners, lawyers, middle managers and retirees - tend to share Allen's conservative philosophy that good government is less government. They reside in one of the most staunchly Republican areas of the state, a stretch of Chesterfield County where Allen got the support of three out of four voters in 1993.
They are what Allen has called the ``forgotten Virginians,'' whose stories have gone untold in a tax-cut debate focused on state employees who would lose their jobs and disadvantaged people who would lose their benefits.
They are people like Steve O'Neill, a 52-year-old Chesterfield County native who five years ago - in the middle of a recession - rolled the dice and started his own real estate brokerage firm.
``You can make more money on your own,'' he said.
O'Neill had yet to earn his first commission when he bumped into the local business-license tax that Allen has vowed to eliminate. Chesterfield County wanted half the first year's tax in advance, before he'd made his first dime in commissions.
``It was three or four hundred dollars,'' he recalled. ``That was money I could have used to pay a secretary or buy another piece of office equipment. It was money that was dead lost.''
O'Neill added that the BPOL - ``Business, Professional and Occupational License'' tax - is unfair because it results in double taxation of some of his firm's revenue. The tax is imposed by all cities, most towns and about half the counties in Virginia.
Chesterfield County applies the tax to commissions paid to O'Neill's agents and again to fees his agents pay to reimburse him for office expenses.
O'Neill sees little personal benefit in the second part of Allen's tax cut plan - a gradual increase in the personal exemption on income taxes.
The change would give an average family of four about $46 next year.
But O'Neill said he supports the tax cut because it would cut revenue and force reductions in the state work force.
``It's just the principle of the thing,'' he said.
``If we can get some of the folks off the public payroll, it will be easier for all of us.''
It is natural that the Bon Air Rotarians would focus on the upside of the Allen budget because Chesterfield County would be spared some of the more drastic cuts in social services for core cities and rural areas with pockets of poverty.
Richard J. Chvala, the club's chairman-elect, said he is convinced that state government is rife with waste, such as patronage jobs handed out to Democrats appointed to review local wills.
``I'm all for Allen,'' Chvala said. ``I think he could cut some more.''
Several of the Rotarians who shared a less-government philosophy said they didn't know enough about the budget bill to pass judgment on specific cuts, such as money for school drop-out prevention, health insurance for teenagers from working families and grants for local law enforcement.
Hartwell Roper, the chief financial officer for Universal Corp., said he didn't understand how Allen could cut taxes and pull off his far-reaching agenda.
``Conceptually, I'm in favor of what Allen is doing,'' Roper said. ``It does kind of make you wonder after all he's done for (increasing funding for) prisons, you have to wonder where the money is coming from.'' by CNB