Return to timeline: Pre-June 2002
Yes, if possible, end city stickers
by VIRGINIAN-PILOT EDITORIAL BOARD, The Virginian-Pilot © May 4, 2001
Virginia Beach may be able to kill the hated car tax stickers in a couple of years. If so, hallelujah! Other cities should follow suit.
The city staff and City Treasurer John T. Atkinson have been studying the matter for a month. The centerpiece of Commissioner of the Revenue Phil Kellam's re-election campaign is a pledge to end the stickers.
The widely despised decals were implemented decades ago, so localities could identify vehicles to tax.
Kellam says he already can identify 98.5 percent of the vehicles from Department of Motor Vehicles records, and that he'll be able to identify all of the vehicles from those records within a year.
Furthermore, a law on the books since 1992 allows any locality to ask the DMV not to issue license plate decals unless local property taxes have been paid. Thus people who failed to pay property taxes still would be prevented from driving.
Kellam believes the city stickers are not necessary anymore.
The city now collects $75 million a year in car taxes, Kellam said, and it still would without the stickers.
The state, meanwhile, is picking up the tab for a growing portion of the car tax. If Richmond ever pays 100 percent of the car tax on the first $20,000 of value, the city would no longer need to mail bills and later stickers for the 82 percent of vehicles valued at $20,000 or less.
Procrastinators would no longer have to stand in interminable lines.
Dropping the stickers would cost Virginia Beach about $7.5 million a year in decal fees. That's less than 1 percent of the city budget. Nonetheless, its loss would leave a hole that would have to be made up.
Also, the cost of the technology needed to fully hook up with the Department of Motor Vehicles is not clear yet.
Beach Finance Director Patricia Phillips says the city is looking for ways to make the property tax process more convenient for residents, while the city breaks even on revenue and cuts administrative costs.
Currently, each car must have three stickers: two on the windshield and one on the license plate. Families with multiple cars sometimes feel as though they never stop scraping stickers off and putting stickers on.
Our preference would be for the state to truly kill the car tax as part of a restructuring of state and local taxes. That beats the current and irrational method of using state taxes to pay a local property tax that varies among localities.
Still, until the restructuring that may never come, freeing residents of the city sticker would be a worthy goal.
If the thing isn't needed, for goodness' sake, get rid of it. Full speed ahead. Give residents a break.