CHAPTER 4

An Act to create a commission to study State and local revenues and
expenditures and related matters and the need, if any, for additional
revenues; to prescribe the commission’s powers and duties, and to
appropriate funds.
[S 135]

Approved February 7, 1962

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. § 1. A commission to be known as the Commission on State and
Local Revenues and Expenditures and Related Matters, hereinafter re-
ferred to as “Commission”, is hereby created. The Commission shall be
composed of fifteen members, three of whom shall be appointed by the
President of the Senate from the membership of that body; four by the
Speaker of the House of Delegates from the membership of that body,
and eight by the Governor. The Governor shall designate the chairman
of the Commission. The members of the Commission shall receive a per
diem of twenty dollars for their services and shall be reimbursed their
actual expenses incurred in the performance of their duties under this
Act. The appointing authorities are requested to make such appointments
with reasonable dispatch.

§ 2. The Commission shall begin its work forthwith and shall com-
plete its study and make its report to the Governor and to the General
Assembly not later than September first, nineteen hundred and sixty-three;
provided, however, that the Governor may, in his discretion, require the
Commission to complete its work and file its report prior to such date.
A copy of the report shall be promptly mailed to each member of the
General Assembly. The Commission shall hold such public hearings in
various parts of the State as it may deem necessary or advisable. The
Commission may call upon any officer or agency of the State for informa-
tion and assistance, may avail itself of the services of the Division of
Statutory Research and Drafting, and may employ such other technical
and secretarial personnel as it deems necessary in its work.

§ 3. The Commission shall make a thorough study of all State and
local taxes, revenues, receipts, and expenditures; the apportionment be-
tween the State and the localities of the sources of revenue; the demands
on the State and the localities for governmental services and the ability
of the State and the localities to meet them; and the allocation of govern-
mental functions as between the State on the one hand and the localities
on the other; the foregoing shall include consideration of State and local
support of functions that are jointly financed by the State and the locali-
ties. Such study shall also include the ascertainment and appraisal of the
existing burden of local taxes on real estate, tangible personal property,
machinery and tools, merchants’ capital, licenses and other subjects that
are taxable locally, and the economic consequences thereof, and any
inequities that may exist; and the ascertainment and appraisal of the
existing burden of State taxes on each of the subjects of taxation on
which the State imposes a tax, and the economic consequences, and any
inequities that may exist. The Commission shall include in its report such
recommendations with respect thereto as it may make under this Act.

§ 4. The Commission shall also make a thorough study of (a) the
question of such new or additional revenue sources, State and local, as
may be thought to be necessary, and if any, what adjustments or repeals,
if any, should be enacted respecting existing subjects of taxation, State
and local; and (b) what method of distribution of the proceeds of such
new or additional sources of revenue, if proposed, as between the State
and the localities should be adopted, or whether the proceeds, or a part
of the proceeds should be employed in increasing State aid appropriations
to the localities for governmental functions that are jointly financed by
the State and the localities. The Commission shall also include in its
report tentative drafts of such legislation as it deems necessary to carry
into effect such recommendations as it shall make under this Act.

2. For the purpose of defraying the cost of the study, including the
printing of the report, there is hereby appropriated to the Commission
out of the general fund of the State treasury, a sum not exceeding fifty
thousand dollars.

3. An emergency exists and this Act is in force from its passage.