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

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[quote=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.  
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