In May 2025, residents, civic associations, and the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance lined up at public hearings to tell the Board of Supervisors that the FY 2026 budget was a spending problem, not a revenue problem. The Fairfax Times documented every word. The Board passed the budget anyway. One year later — last week — the same Democrat majority adopted a $5.7 billion FY27 budget that pushes the average household tax bill up roughly $337. Read what your neighbors said the first time.
The Fairfax Times reporting below is the work of staff writer Samir Ali Nomani, published May 2, 2025. The Fairfax County Republican Committee is republishing the verbatim resident testimony documented in that article — with attribution — because the dynamic Mr. Nomani captured last May has not changed in 2026. Only the dollar figures have.
The throughline: a Democrat majority unwilling to cut, residents unwilling to keep paying.
The Federation — an 85-year-old residential coalition of Fairfax civic associations — for the first time in recent memory declined to support full funding of the Fairfax County Public Schools FY 2026 budget request. Per the Federation, as documented by the Fairfax Times:
“We do not believe the FCPS FY 2026 Proposed Budget represents a truly needs-based budget. Despite the County Executive’s request for all County departments to submit budgets with 10% cuts, FCPS has not suggested any programmatic or policy shifts to improve their operations and/or ensure that our tax dollars are spent both efficiently and effectively.”
— Fairfax County Federation of Citizens Associations, statement, via Fairfax Times
The Federation also told the Board, per the Fairfax Times: “In a difficult fiscal environment, every government agency must examine whether their approach to spending represents their best critical thinking about how to meet their mission, and not to simply engage in business as usual.”
Translation, in plain English: stop the autopilot.
“A call for a rise in taxes beyond inflation to cover our $271 million deficit is a public admission of failure to manage taxpayer resources properly.”
— Jeff Leach, board member, Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, via Fairfax Times
“The mounting tax burden on county taxpayers is the result of overspending, not from legitimate educational costs or rising property values.”
— Rob Dyck, board member, Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, via Fairfax Times
FCTA board member Charles McAndrew, addressing the Board of Supervisors directly, kept it short: “The transfer to the school should be substantially reduced.”
Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) — the lone Republican on a 9-1 Board, and the lone no vote on the FY27 budget last week — told the Fairfax Times in May 2025:
“When it comes to the county budget, we have yet to see the full impact of the federal reductions. The hospitality industry is already reporting an over 10% reduction in business since the start of the year in part due to cancelled federal government business in the area. As our commercial tax base shrinks, more of the tax burden shifts to residents.”
— Pat Herrity (R-Springfield), via Fairfax Times
“Staff have been warning the board for years that this budget forecast would be bleak, and the board has refused to reduce spending.”
— Pat Herrity (R-Springfield), via Fairfax Times
On the proposed meals tax — which the Board of Supervisors went on to enact at 4%, effective January 1, 2026, and kept in place last week despite renewed pushback — Herrity said:
“With FY 2026 revenue totaling $11.7 billion, it is disingenuous for the board to say that the county has a revenue problem in order to justify a 10% total tax on prepared food.”
— Pat Herrity (R-Springfield), via Fairfax Times
“Instead of constant tax increases and spending beyond our means, I urge this board to consider greater transparency in the total tax burden.”
— Kenneth Russell, Fairfax County resident, public hearing testimony, via Fairfax Times
Springfield Civic Association president Gail Nittle reminded the Board that Fairfax County citizens had previously voted down a meals tax twice via referendum, but now that the Board can — in her words, per Fairfax Times — “bypass the public,” the meals tax was back. She added that the burden would fall hardest on small restaurants “some of whom struggled but made it through Covid” and on the residents who eat there.
The Board passed the FY 2026 budget anyway. The Board imposed the meals tax anyway. The Board just adopted the FY 2027 budget last week — same 9-1 split, same Herrity no, same $337 average household tax bill increase, same untouched 4% meals tax.
The receipts in the Fairfax Times piece read like a forecast that came true.
All ten Board of Supervisors seats — Chairman Jeff McKay’s and the nine district seats — are on the November 2027 ballot. Eighteen months. Mark that date down.
Quotations above are reproduced with attribution from the Fairfax Times article “County residents push back on the FY 2026 budget” by Samir Ali Nomani, published May 2, 2025. Read the full original reporting at the Fairfax Times.
The Fairfax County Republican Committee runs on neighbors — neighbors who testify at public hearings, neighbors who write letters to the editor, neighbors who watch the rolls. No one can do everything; everyone can do something. Volunteer with the Fairfax GOP.
And bring the resources. The November 3, 2026 federal midterm is six months away, and out-of-state Democrat PAC money is already flowing into Virginia. Local money is what answers it — voter contact, mailers, ad reach, every door inside Fairfax County between August and Election Day. Donate to the Fairfax County Republican Committee. Match yours with a neighbor’s. Forward this to the homeowner who just opened the new tax bill.