Instead, I will concentrate my remarks on what I believe is the most important aspect of your charge from the General Assembly. The tendency will be to spend most of your time debating the pros and cons of various tax schemes. I ask that you try to avoid that temptation and spend considerable time thinking about the proper relationship between state and local governments with respect to the responsibility to provide various services. Unfortunately, there are many services for which the responsibility is currently shared between the state and local government. This leads to continuous disputes over funding.
Education is a prime example.
The lines that distinguish between state and local responsibilities are fuzzy and need to be sharpened. The same can be said for many of the service areas. We hope that you will be able to shed some light on this subject and look forward to your analysis. Any thorough examination of the relationship between state and local government responsibilities must sooner or later deal with the Dillon Rule, for it is the source of extreme frustration for Virginia local governments. As you are aware, there are two fundamentally different philosophies for interpreting the power of local governments, Home Rule and the Dillon Rule.