by Morgan Sweeney
A select group of Loudoun County residents may soon receive an extra “no strings attached” $500 per month from the county.
Loudoun County’s Board of Supervisors voted in its most recent finance committee meeting to move forward with plans to establish a guaranteed income pilot project, as several other Virginia localities have done — along with more than 150 other localities across the country, according to Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.
Guaranteed income is born from the idea that “all Americans deserve an income floor” and that “rising income inequality is compounded by a growing racial wealth gap.” In Loudoun, it’s connected to the county’s Equity Resolution and the work of the county’s Chief Equity Officer to “[eliminate] social and racial disparities.”
“The purpose of an economic mobility pilot is to first and foremost support social and economic equity,” according to a document prepared for Tuesday’s meeting.
Guaranteed income pilots vary greatly in the amount of the direct cash benefit, how many, and which residents they help. Loudoun’s program would be called the Resident Income Stability Enhancement Economic Mobility Program Pilot, or RISE. It has been proposed to help 50-60 families with an income of less than $50,000 (about 30% of the area median income) by providing a monthly direct cash benefit of at least $500.
“I want to thank the staff for all of their work on reaching out to other jurisdictions that are doing this, not just even in the region here but in other locations and doing the research to help formulate this program,” said Supervisor Koran Saines, D-Sterling, who initially proposed the program.
“I think thus far it’s coming into order – obviously, there are still some questions that need to be asked and I’m sure we will go down the process of putting up some more framework and guardrails… but I think this is a good step in the right direction,” Saines said.
Initially, the pilot’s funding was to come from remaining American Rescue Plan dollars, but that money was allotted to other projects. Now, the funding is to come from about $2 million in county surplus funds—a change that ultimately caused Supervisor Kristen Umstattd, D-Leesburg, to withdraw her support.
“When this was going to be paid out of ARPA funds, I thought it was worth investigating,” Umstattd said. “I’m not going to support it any longer though because 63% of Americans don’t have $500 to handle an emergency. That’s a huge percentage.”
Umstattd argued that it’s unfair to raise taxes for everyone making more than 30% of the area median income when one of the common arguments for a guaranteed income program is to help participants build an emergency fund.
“Those who are right above the 30% AMI rate on income are going to be seeing higher taxes to pay for this program now and they are barely making more than the folks who would qualify,” Umstattd said.
She added that she would prefer the county increase its support for more targeted forms of assistance than pursue RISE.
The board also discussed whether the program would place requirements on participants’ citizenship or work status. Some other programs have allowed undocumented residents to qualify, a feature that Supervisor Juli Briskman, D-Algonkian, advocated for.
“They have jobs, they pay taxes, and they should be able to participate in the programs that are supported by their own taxes,” Briskman said.
County staff will continue plotting out the program’s details, which will be shared with the board in the coming months.
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Morgan Sweeney is a staff writer covering Virginia and Maryland for The Center Square. Morgan was an active member of the journalism program as an undergraduate at Hillsdale College and previously freelanced for The Center Square.
