Northern Virginia Sales Tax Referendum

Sales Tax Myths and Realities
MYTH	REALITY
The tax will improve air quality	No studies show tax referendum projects would improve congestion or air quality. In the absence of smart growth planning, adding capacity is counter-productive.
40% for transit, guaranteed	Transit funding is actually much less. The 40% "guarantee" only applies to the initial $2.8B, requires NVTA approval, and is dependent on federal matching funds.
We offer no alternatives	Blueprint for a Better Region offers a realistic, achievable plan for both transportation & livable communities, not contingent on major new infrastructure & endorsed by local leaders.
Opponents to the tax are providing misinformation	Our positions are based on published reports & public documents.
The referendum is all about smart growth	The region's leading smart growth, environmental, & bicycling orgs. oppose it.
The tax is good for Metro	Only 5% is allocated to Metro's urgent maintenance and rail car needs. Metro needs $6.2 billion for these needs but the sales tax allocates only $250 million over 20 years, just $12.5 million per year.

More highways.
More traffic.
More congestion.
That's Northern Virginia if the Sales Tax Referendum passes on Nov. 5

INSTEAD OF more transit, fewer cars and less sprawl, the 1/2-cent sales tax increase is destined to bring more roads through rural areas, which means more development, more cars and more traffic problems in our neighborhoods.

"Sprawl lies at the heart of our traffic problem," says Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. " Without smarter growth in Northern Virginia, pouring billions of dollars into transportation - most of it highway expansion - will make the problem worse, not better."

"This reinforces our contention that the sales tax proposal is fatally flawed," said Roger Diedrich, land use chairman of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. "The proponents have used transit as the top selling point of the referendum, yet less than 5 percent of the package is going to essential Metro needs. If the proponents are so committed to transit, why doesn't all the $5 billion go to Metro?"

Enticing voters by saying the sales tax will fund transit, while only earmarking a small percentage of the funds to transit has led opponents to call the referendum a "Trojan Horse."

"Wrapped in transit, this Trojan Horse will establish a permanent stream of funding to building the outer bypasses that some developers have always wanted," said the Coalition's Schwartz.

Among the opponents of the tax are the Audubon Naturalist Society, Coalition for Smarter Growth, Fairfax Coalition for Smarter Growth, Friends of the Earth, Piedmont Environmental Council, Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, Virginia Bicycling Federation, Virginia League of Conservation Voters, Voters to Stop Sprawl, Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

Instead of a Northern Virginia Sprawl Tax, members of the Coalition are calling for a state and local partnership for growth management, a plan to focus development at transit stations and to revitalize our cities, and to take steps to reduce the amount people have to drive.

"We are not insensitive to the appalling gridlock that many of our fellow citizens find themselves in everyday," said John Jaske of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters. "To the contrary, we have been arguing for years about the need to address this problem as a fundamental lack of effective local, regional and state planning."