Income/Budget for VA/MD and state's priorities!

[Anonymous]

I'm in the process of buying the home and open to for VA and MD, but I would like to learn how these stated operate. My priorities are good schools, government benefits(like Medicaid etc.).As per my understanding, MD spends money on schools and government benefits. MD doesn't spend on infrastructure. But I don't understand how MD generates more income than VA to offer this? MD's income sources are income, sales, and property taxes.MD is missing lot of corporate taxes. VA generates income on corporate, income, sales, and property taxes and has more income to spend on schools, infrastructure, and government benefits.what are MD state priorities vs VA state's priorities on budgeting?

[Anonymous]

MD generates income with casinos and uses these funds for schooling https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-school-construction-20181211-story.html

[Anonymous]

I keep hearing the VA has lower income taxes than MD, so while it does generate some income tax, it's probably not as much as in MD. Sales tax is the same in both states.

Property tax is dependent on county, in both states. Loudon county for example has higher property tax than MoCo.

[Anonymous]

Tough to compare.

1. Population of VA is dramatically larger than pop of MD, roughly 40%. State overhead is cheaper.

2. VA has always maintained a highly diverse public university system that, taken overall, has a much more prominent national and global rep than MD's system.

3. Baltimore is largely impoverished and dependent on public transfer funding. VA has no large jurisdiction within the state that is similarly dependent.

4. More governmental functions and services in VA are pushed down to the local level than is the case in MD.

5. In MD, local government budget and tax and spending decisions widely vary from place to place. In MD, many people live within a city or town, and also a county. In VA, most forms of fiscal and tax policy are relatively uniform due to the state's rigid application of the Dillon Rule, which absolutely prevents local home rule and local expansions of govt functions. Also, in VA, you live within one city or one county. Only a few places are within both a town and a county. In VA, you seldom pay for two layers of local govt. (Examples of two-layer local govt include Herndon and Vienna).

6. VA imposes rigid limits on debt, on both the state and localities. Every city or county is limited to having outstanding debt of no greater than a small % of the stated, assessed, taxable value of property within that jurisdiction. There's no way around the limits.

7. VA has in place a comprehensive system of state and local govt citizen advisory and review boards with actual legal authority, although some of the specific functions of some of the boards is quite narrow.

8. VA is trending quite blue. There are only 5 statewide elected officials - Gov, LtGov, AG, and 2 US Senators. All are Dems. Not the case in MD.

There are a million other differences. Obv, I'm on the VA side.

[Anonymous]

Looks like it's a safe bet to buy in VA