Arlington leaders are laying the groundwork for a 2027 referendum asking voters to increase the local sales tax from 6% to 7%.
“Arlington is very seriously considering it,” County Board member Maureen Coffey said at the July 2 meeting of the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC) board of directors.
Under the biennial state budget adopted in Richmond late last month, Northern Virginia localities now have the power to hold voter referendums to increase sales taxes by up to 1%, with the extra funding going to transit, education or a combination.
Coffey said that despite interest among some in that county’s power structure to authorize a referendum eventually, there is “absolutely no chance” it would happen this year.
“There are so many conversations that have to occur both internally and politically,” she said. “We’re in no way, shape or form prepared to move that quickly.”
Coffey’s comments seemed to catch other regional leaders by surprise. Before she spoke, Walter Alcorn, a member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said he believed no local jurisdiction was “seriously considering” moving forward with a referendum at the moment.
Coffey pointed to the need for a revenue stream to fund the county’s costs associated with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
“I don’t know if we see another way to meet our Metro obligations,” said Coffey, who likely will rotate in as County Board chair in 2027.
Until now, only nine of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties received the authority to hold referendums increasing the local sales tax for school construction: Charlotte, Gloucester, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Northampton, Patrick and Pittsylvania counties and the city of Danville. Northern Virginia was not represented on the list.
The budget expands that authority to all cities and counties, capping the increase at 1%, and gives Northern Virginia governments the extra authority to use some of the funding for public transit, as well.
At the NVTC meeting, Alexandria City Council member Canek Aguirre said a hodgepodge of local government responses to the new taxing authority would not benefit the region. He suggested devising a singular strategy, perhaps with multiple localities holding concurrent referendums, to show state legislators that the region is willing to address the funding issue locally.
“We need to send a unified message to Richmond,” he said. “It can’t just be one of us doing a one-off. It’s too critical.”
“Even if a jurisdiction isn’t having a referendum, the collaborative messaging will be important,” added NVTC chair Sarah Bagley, Alexandria’s vice mayor.
How to get to a unified message? “We’re going to have to have a lot of frank conversations with each other to be sure we’re on the same page,” Aguirre said.
Falls Church City Council member David Snyder, a former NVTC chair, said he supports “regional cohesion” in addressing the sales-tax issue.
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said, but a sense of regional cooperation may not be enough to spur localities into action.
“That’s one factor among many” each locality will need to consider, he said.
One veteran Northern Virginia Democratic insider said local elected leaders, nearly all Democrats, had reason to tread carefully. The sales tax is regressive, the official told ARLnow, and Arlington voters may not appreciate the rate rising to 7% on non-food purchases and 12% on prepared foods and restaurant dining.
As Northern Virginia’s largest locality, Fairfax County could hold the key to regional cohesiveness.
The seats of all 10 Fairfax supervisors are on the ballot in November 2027, and as Alcorn reminded others at the meeting, the county government’s last three referendums aimed at providing additional funding for schools and education had a similar result.
“All three failed,” he said.
Even in Arlington, where candidates and ballot questions supported by Democrats typically win by a 4-to-1 margin, there is no guarantee of voter approval, Coffey said.
Passage “is not a given, even in Arlington,” Coffey said.
“We have more than a 50/50 shot of being successful in Arlington, but it’s a massive investment of everyone’s time, energy and political capital — really having to build a movement to do it,” she said.
“We’re not taking a decision lightly,” said Coffey.
Putting a referendum on the November 2027 ballot in Arlington would break with tradition, where bond issues and other controversial measures typically are addressed in even-number years to benefit from higher voter turnout.
Holding a vote in November 2027 likely would see the lowest turnout of the four-year cycle, because no statewide or federal race is at the top of the ballot. Low turnout is likely to benefit opponents of tax increases.
Localities also would have to determine how to divide up any future tax revenue between schools and transit, which could create further complications.
During their fiscal 2027 budget process, both School Board members and Arlington Public Schools’ leadership made reference to revenue from a sales-tax increase as one way to speed up a backlog of capital projects.
Fairfax’s Alcorn said the July 2 discussion will give local leaders some things to think about during the summer.
“I didn’t expect to have this conversation tonight, but it’s a good start,” he said. “We definitely need to talk about this and figure things out.”
At the NVTC board meeting, members expressed a degree of disappointment in what they viewed as limited success in getting the General Assembly to address the region’s challenges in funding transportation.
“The outcome [in Richmond], to say the least, was unexpected,” Snyder said disapprovingly. “I have a lot of questions about what happened and why.”
Aimee Perron Seibert, who represents NVTC’s interests in Richmond during the General Assembly session, suggested everyone take a break before circling back and attempting to dissect the 2026 legislative session.
“There’s still some unpacking that needs to happen about how we got where we got to,” she said. “I don’t have a good answer to that at the moment.”
One major unresolved question concerns the modest successes that local leaders found in securing transit funding in the 2026 session. Are they the best that state legislators are going to provide Northern Virginia, or are they the beginning of a series of increasing commitments?
For now, Seibert is choosing to be an optimist.
“Most people think it’s a first step,” she said of the legislature’s new commitments. “I’m hoping that’s the case.”
