Funding of Constitutional Officers - Virginia Joint Legislative Audit ...

Service Equity. The first goal used to develop a more systematic funding
system was service equity. Service equity means that all citizens should have equal
access to certain services provided by constitutional officers. Accordingly, JLARC staff
developed the following definition ofservice equity for use in the study:
Service equity is the provision ofthe resources necessary for meeting
the recognized workload requirements of all constitutional officers.
Objective measures should be used to estimate the resources necessary
to provide State-recognized workload levels.
This definition ofservice equity addresses both horizontal and vertical equity.
Essentially, horizontal equity requires that offices with the same circumstances and
requirements be treated equally in terms of funding, while vertical equity requires
that offices with different circumstances and requirements be treated differently. To
achieve the service equity goal, resources must be available to meet the recognized
workload in all localities, including the special requirements of certain localities.
To ensure that services are provided for in all localities, the State can base its
funding for services on objective measures ofworkload. The objective measures should
be sensitive to special staffing requirements due to factors beyond local control. Thus,
the purpose of the service equity goal is to treat localities with fundamentally equal
workload as equals, yet to recognize differences due to circumstances beyond local
control.
Tax Equity. In addition to ensuring that services are provided, the State can
also ensure that it treats localities fairly in its financial support of services. This is
done by: (1) accepting responsibility for State-mandated costs and (2) recognizing the
relative abilities of local governments to raise revenue to pay for mandated services.
JLARC staffdeveloped the following definition of tax equity for this study:
Tax equity is the appropriate assignment ofresponsibility for Staterecognized
service costs of constitutional officers. This assignment
can be either primarily State, primarily local, or shared State-local
cost responsibility. For shared cost responsibility services, when
apportioning the State and local shares of the costs, each local
government's ability to generate revenues should be taken into account.
This definition was operationalized in two parts. The first part involves the
development of a framework for determining what services should be paid for primarily
by the State, primarily by the local governments, or by both. The framework is
based on an assessment of mandates for services, and the level of government which
benefits from the services.
In the second part of tax equity, the services to be shared by both the State
and local governments are separated into the specific shares to be paid. A major
component of this second step was the identification of a method for recognizing
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