Anyone have any answers for this guy?

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By Melanie Willard
Las Vegas, NV

I have a friend who is a former resident of Virginia. He tried to renew his current driver’s license in Texas and found out that the state of Viriginia has a “hold” on his license from November of 2000 for proof of insurance. He lived in Virginia less than a year; by November of 2000 he was living in Texas. The State of Texas won’t renew his license because of this hold.

By November of 2000 he’d already obtained his Texas license and you couldn’t do that without proof of insurance in Texas. Can you direct me to somebody that can help get this resolved without having to pay Virginia over $500?

He’s lived at the same address in Texas since 2000 and in order to renew his plates every year he has to submit proof on insurance. He doesn’t even have the vehicle in question anymore; that was sold in 2005.  It appears that the state of Virginia is trying to rip-off former residents. Read more »

Osvaldo Gago | Wikimedia Commons

Already, it’s brilliantly clear that Virginia’s grab-bag-of-taxes solution to a decade-long transportation funding crisis is unbelievably and needlessly complex.

The prime thing it seems to accomplish is that it gives Gov. Bob McDonnell bragging rights to say that he’s the first governor in the history of the nation who “abolished the gas tax” — the retail version, anyway. That may prove a useful resume-builder for his future in national politics

The plan replaces the retail gas tax with a wholesale tax that will certainly be passed onto consumers (and which is even higher for you diesel drivers, sorry!); raises the state sales tax, the vehicle transfer tax, and imposes local-option sales taxes for transportation, higher hotel taxes in Northern Virginia and some more fees and taxes.

The bill is 109 pages long, and they could have fixed the whole issue, mostly, by changing two digits in one line — 17.5  27.5 cents per gallon — and indexing the tax to inflation in the next sentence.

Now we have another question, raised in today’s Washington Post. Former Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Paul Goldman and Norman Leahy, editor of the right-leaning BearingDrift.com, ask: “Is it unconstitutional.” They seem to answer yes: Read more »

Ross Grove | Flickr | CC By 2.0

It’s doubtful you’ve ever heard of the Recipient Audit Unit of the Division of Program Integrity of the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services.

But with such a daunting 17-word title, you can bet it ranks up there with other government agencies in terms of its capacity to snarl a wife and mother of two in the finest grade of bureaucratic red tape.

Her name is Melissa Cadwell. She’s been tangling with the RAU of the DPI of the VDMAS for months now. They’ve dunned her for $1,108.98 and are threatening to send the debt to collections.

Cadwell’s saga is interesting, frustrating and littered with other acronyms, too: DSS, COBRA and FAMIS. Permit me to add another just one more: SNAFU.

Cadwell and her husband, Joel, live down in the Pulaski County community of Fairlawn with their two children, Cody, now 17, and Alicia, 14. Joel’s a disabled veteran who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Until March 2009, the family’s health insurance came through her job at Goodyear. They lost that when Goodyear shut down its Radford operation and laid everyone off, she said.

The Cadwells couldn’t afford expensive COBRA insurance (which requires a former employee to pay the entire cost) on her unemployment checks. So through the Pulaski County Department of Social Services, Melissa signed up Cody and Alicia for a health-insurance program for low-income children called FAMIS, which essentially is Medicaid.

By April of 2010 Melissa had landed another job with a large national bank. Her health insurance there started that June, so she called Pulaski County DSS and told them that the kids no longer needed Medicaid coverage.

“The caseworker at the time told me I needed to submit that in writing,” Melissa told me. “And so I did, to the local Pulaski Department of Social Services. I did not send it certified. Now I wish I had.”

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

qJake | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: Lots of people have been wondering why on Earth Gov. Bob McDonnell wants to kill the gas tax, but at the same time implement a new $100 a year tax on hybrids. I simply assumed some cynics in a Richmond conference room came up with this idea after one of them said, “How can we stick it to those environmentally conscious wackos who never vote for us?” But Bill Carstensen of Blacksburg has given it more thought.

By Bill Carstensen

I have been searching for a good reason that we hybrid owners should pay more to register our vehicles than others under the new “no gas tax” plan (gee, that sounds a lot like “no car tax” doesn’t it? That certainly went well for the state treasury).

Here is the plan’s logic as I see it:

Spread the cost of building and maintaining roads to all who spend money in the state through a sales tax increase and a removal of the state gas tax.  I can go for that, at least in principle, as we all benefit from roads whether we use them personally or not. Someone uses them to bring us most of what we own and what we eat. For added revenue, charge a bit more to everyone who registers a vehicle in Virginia.  I can also see that plan as we all should pay toward the roads we drive on through registration fees.

And, best of all, for more added revenue, charge a special rate of $100 per year to those who have made the decision to drive hybrid or electric vehicles (Virginia was 8th nationally in such registrations in 2009 so I am certainly not alone here).  So, let’s try to understand the economics of the last part of this decision. Read more »

Savannah, Ga. | Lukelastic | Wikimedia Commons

The price of regular gas is around $3.15 per gallon, give or take. I bet you’d like to see that dip below the $3 mark, right? Who wouldn’t?

That’s one of the things Gov. Bob McDonnell is counting on with his eyebrow-raising proposal to end once and for all Virginia’s 17.5-cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline in order to solve Virginia’s long-running transportation-funding problems.

But reaction seemed mixed among Roanoke Valley motorists last week shortly after McDonnell trotted out the idea. I drove around town and pestered them at the pumps for their thoughts.

Before we get to those, here’s a brief outline: McDonnell would end Virginia’s tax on gasoline (but not diesel fuel) and he estimates that will save Virginia motorists $3.5 billion at the pump over 5 years.

To replace that lost revenue, the General Assembly would increase the general sales tax from 5 percent to 5.8 percent. That would apply to clothing, food at restaurants, furniture, appliances, autos, and just about any other item you purchase other than medicine or groceries or vehicle fuel. The current 2.5 percent sales tax on groceries would not increase.

READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.

jaquen | Wikimedia Commons | Text by Dan

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said yesterday that having public schoolteachers armed with firearms is worth discussing, in the wake of the massacre in Newton, Conn. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has more or less said the same thing. Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, has put in a bill mandating teachers-with-guns. Others in the pro-gun crowd are chiming in, so there seems to be some support coalescing around the idea that more guns are a solution to massacre tragedies like Newton and others.

They aren’t though. They’re an illogical band-aid, one that no doubt warms of the hearts of NRA nuts like Wayne LaPierre, who will say and do anything to goose gun sales in America.

The idea is criminally dumb. It ought to disqualify any politician who raises it from ever holding any office ever again. I can use the pro-gunners own “logic” to demonstrate why. Read more »

Shot by Dan

Virginia law impedes, rather than helps, voting in elections

Note from Dan: The following letter was sent by E. Duane Howard of Roanoke, who worked the polls Tuesday, to City Councilman Sherman Lea. It relates to this story, and this editorial, in today’s paper.

Dear Sherman:

I hope you might consider the problem of inexperienced poll workers.  The problem has to be changed in Richmond.  The greatest resource of poll workers are people like myself who do not work, we are an aging group with numerous health problems.

I enjoyed my experiences working the polls, but the requirement that one MUST work the entire shift is simply to much for many of us with health problems.  A 13-15 hour day, and in this past Tuesday’s fiasco up to 17 hours or more. And I think its only a flat fee, no matter hour many hours one wounds up working. Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

Another person stung by a court ‘processing fee’

Mr. Casey,

I was telling a friend here at work her car’s inspection sticker was ready to expire this month (Aug 2012); I wanted to warn her she needed to get it inspected.  Being overheard, another employee told me about your column and she emailed it to me … now that I’ve read it, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to tell my story.

July 2007 my youngest son finished his studies in Orlando Florida after 21 months being away from home.  He had his car with him and for the sake of clarity, let me add during those 21 months, the times he came home for a visit were by plane.  When he arrived home the first week of July, after the dust settled from his return, I made an appointment to have his car inspected the following week.  Well, naturally within three days, Roanoke County had sited him with an expired inspection sticker. He shouldn’t have been driving it but that’s what happened.  No problem, I thought, I’ll call and explain.

I called the phone number on the citation to try and talk to someone about what had already been arranged and on my third attempt to get a real person I was successful.  The clerk on the other end of the line totally agreed with me and said they were more than willing to take the offense off his record if I produced a receipt showing the inspection was done…and then [quote]: “you’ll still have to pay the processing fee of $60.00” ! —that’s what it was in 2007.  Dumbfounded, I asked the clerk if he was kidding and I was advised in a polite way no he wasn’t. Read more »

Wikimedia Commons

Virginia yet hasn’t dipped its toes into direct public funding of private religious schools, although the General Assembly this year approved a back-door version of that. It passed a law allowing tax credits to individuals and businesses who contribute to private-school scholarship funds.

That means people and companies can pay at least some of their taxes to religious schools if they choose to, rather than to the state.

But the commonwealth may one reach the conservative holy grail of taxpayer-paid-for vouchers for private schools. A Louisiana program now underway does just that, and it’s creating a bit of a kerfuffle in the Pelican state.

This year, 121 private schools applied for vouchers worth up to $8,500 per student. The state approved all but two schools and 99 percent of the approved schools are religious ones. About 5,600 students will be attending them. Read more »

Amin Eshaiker | Wikimedia Commons

You know those kindly and smiling retail employees who stand near the exit door and check your receipts to make sure you’re not stealing something?

They’ve demanded it of me at Kroger (Towers) and at Best Buy and it happens every time at Sam’s Club. They want you to prove you just bought the item that you now own, before they let you go.

It’s particularly nettlesome if you’re buying one or two items at Sam’s Club, which I do on occasion. Because not only do you have to line up and show your card to get into the joint, you have to line up to pay, and THEN you often have to line up to leave. With your own, recently purchased property.

And if you’re No. 9 in a line of people with loaded carts, who have bought dozens of items, and you’re carrying one, it’s particularly aggravating.

It never occurred to me, until I read this post on The Consumerist, which says there’s a Virginia law that says customers aren’t required to show a receipt for items they have purchased in order to get out of a retailer. It makes sense, though. You own the thing. Why should you have to prove that?

But that doesn’t stop the retailers from trying to get you to cough up the receipt.

If you feel the same way, you may want to read the tale of Rick (below) and his experience in a Virginia Wal-mart, after he had just purchased a TV and was trying to get out of the store. Read more »