Loudoun County's budget outlook is getting worse, prompting officials to warn of looming employee layoffs and deep cuts to services.

Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge), chairman of the Board of Supervisors' budget planning committee, said the county is looking at "tremendously large reductions" in services caused by a 7 percent decline in the county's tax revenue. Foreclosures have not let up and the 30 percent of Loudoun County households that bring home less than $75,000 per year are getting hit hard, he said.

"The revenue situation its not getting better," Burton said. "It's still declining."

Some critics have accused Burton of living in the weeds, so to speak, and offering increasingly pessimistic visions of the county's budget future. The numbers offered up at Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting are preliminary, budget officials say, and there's still three months let to go in the season.

But with three new schools and a new jail to fund, along with steep dropoffs in county tax revenue, the budget picture is not good, supervisors acknowledged.

Despite an aggressive campaign to get her kicked off Loudoun's chief advisory health board, a lobbyist who worked against autism legislation last year in Richmond was confirmed Tuesday to a third term.

On a 5-4 vote, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors approved the reappointment of Mindy M. Williams, a lobbyist with Fairfax-based Access Point Public Affairs, to the Loudoun Health Council.

Her lobbying work against autism legislation during last year's General Assembly session caused Supervisor Stevens Miller (D-Dulles) to call for her ouster. The Loudoun County delegation to the Virginia General Assembly supported bills that, if enacted, would have required insurers to pay for therapy for children under the age of 6 who have been diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders.

"Parent after parent of autistic children have come to me, asking for us and the Chamber to some gesture of compassion and send someone else to Richmond," Miller said Tuesday before the vote. "In my view, this person had a conflict of interest...It's an egregious insult and, if this person is confirmed, I will seek to have this seat removed from the Health Council."

Miller said he met with Williams as a supervisor last year to discuss autism legislation without her telling him she was a paid lobbyist against the bills.

"Had I known that, I would have chosen my words very differently," he said.

Miller has also used autism legislation as a chief component of his campaign for House delegate.

Loudoun County is considering asking the state to purchase 4,100 acres of foreclosed property originally slotted for residential development to turn into a state park.

In August, four properties owned by developer Greenvest LC were sold in a foreclosure auction to its creditor, New York-based iStar Financial, for $69 million. Three years earlier, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted against a proposal to build 15,000 houses on the properties -- an ambitious plan that the Vienna-based developer had promised would make turn the region into new Reston or Columbia, 35 miles west of Washington. It was the largest planned development in Loudoun County's history.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) paid a visit to Northern Virginia today in the hopes that his appeal among suburban voters might rub off on four fellow Democrats running for the House of Delegates: Incumbents Paul Nichols (Prince William) and Chuck Caputo (Fairfax/Loudoun), and newcomers John Bell (Loudoun/Prince William) and Mark Keam (Fairfax).

If you'll recall, Kaine won the 2005 gubernatorial race in part by emphasizing the issues that mattered to suburbanites: traffic, development and education. He became the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate in two decades to win Loudoun and Prince William counties, and he still enjoys a 71 percent approval rate in Northern Virginia, according to a recent Washington Post poll -- despite Republican efforts to paint him as a part-time governor because of his second job as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Loudoun County officials are forecasting a worse-than-anticipated budget shortfall next year of at least 11 percent, a predicament that would result in a slew of public programs being cut, hundreds of jobs being eliminated and a hefty increase in personal property tax rates for one of Northern Virginia's wealthiest localities.

Ben Mays, Loudoun's deputy budget director, told county supervisors at a meeting Wednesday that his office has projected a shortfall of about $72.5 million, and that Loudoun's real property portfolio could fall next year by at least 5 percent, or $30.7 million. An additional $84.2 million in expenses is projected, including operating costs associated with three new schools for 2,850 students and a new county jail.

"These are conservative numbers," Mays said. "We're trying to be cautious and they are preliminary, but they really are reasonable estimates."

The most surprising number was a suggested 21-cent increase in the personal property tax rate, to $1.458 per $100 of assessed value. Officials said the increase might be needed to cover expenses. If approved, the average personal property tax in Loudoun would go up by about $779 if county residential assessments stayed flat.

Like those in the rest of Northern Virginia, budget officials in Loudoun are placing the blame for the shortfall on decreased commercial assessments, which are expected to continue to decline next year. The county has also exhausted its federal stimulus money, is unable to refinance its bonds and is projecting another lean year for state appropriations.

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Dire budget forecasts in Loudoun County could force one of the wealthiest localities in Northern Virginia to slash its expenses for its upcoming fiscal year, a move that could constrain the county's 57,000-student school system.

The budget predictions are to be laid out Wednesday at a county Board of Supervisors meeting (9 a.m., 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg) but county officials already have indicated that deep cuts are likely and might come from Loudoun County Public Schools, which receives 70 percent of the county budget, or about $762 million.

"It's the biggest part of our budget, and we've been discussing cuts for years -- but with the forecast being like it is, we may have to go further," said Supervisor Jim Burton (I-Blue Ridge), chairman of the Finance, Government Services and Operations Committee.

Loudoun County Public Schools officials have said its burgeoning student population and comparatively low funding-per-pupil ratio (the district spent about $12,898 per student last year, about $440 less than Fairfax) means it can't afford to cut services.
Like the rest of Northern Virginia, budget officials in Loudoun are placing blame on decreased county commercial assessments, which are expected to continue to fall next year.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Robert F. McDonnell unveiled a multi-part plan to address gang violence this afternoon as the former attorney general portrayed himself as the choice law-and-order candidate.

"We have seen the presence of gangs in Northern Virginia that we never thought we would see," McDonnell said. "It is time to intensify our efforts."

McDonnell, speaking outside the Loudoun County Courthouse in Leesburg, outlined a broad policy proposal, which included the expansion of Virginia's Gang Reduction and Intervention Program (GRIP); increased federal, and possibly state, funding for the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force; the creation of "gang-free zones" in public areas outside of schools, including bus stops, hospitals and community centers; the creation of a state anti-gang coordinator underneath the Virginia Secretary of Public Safety to centralize state policing efforts; and tougher state penalties for gang recruitment.

House Speaker William J. Howell made it clear yesterday that he is looking to Loudoun County to help Republicans keep control of the House of Delegates in the 2009 elections.

"I know this sounds self-serving, the presidential stuff is important, but next year we've got House of Delegates seats, and there's a couple that are representing Loudoun and parts of Loudoun County that I know we can win back," Howell told a meeting of the Loudoun County Republican Committee.

A former aide to Loudoun County Chairman Scott K. York said that York must be the happiest man in the country today.

That's because tomorrow York could become a powerful player in the region. At the first official meeting of the new Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, the board is likely to return to York a host of powers that were stripped from him from the previous board.

A former reporter who went from news-breaker to news-maker earlier this year when he revealed the details of his purported off-the-record conversations with Loudoun's top prosecutor is still on the local political scene.

After quitting his job with the Loudoun County weekly Leesburg Today, Charlie Jackson volunteered for several Loudoun Democrats' campaigns, he said in an interview today. He also helped set up a press event in which the Democratic candidates for the Loudoun Board of Supervisors signed an oversized ethics pledge for the benefit of clicking cameras.

A common gripe around Loudoun County these days has been the way Richmond divvies up the tax money generated by Northern Virginia, the state's "economic engine."

Only a fraction of every tax dollar generated in Northern Virginia comes back in the form of road improvements, school funding and similar benefits. Candidates keep demanding "our fair share" to pay for the county's badly needed schools and roads.

But two state delegates this week broke from the chorus.

Jill Holtzman Vogel, the Republican candidate hoping to replace retiring Virginia Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. in the 27th District, is getting heat over her husband's lobbying activity in Washington.

According to the Northern Virginia Daily, Alex Vogel's firm has lobbied on behalf of the American Immigrant Lawyers Association, which last week announced it supports a bill that would allow provide a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.

Today, her Democratic opponent Karen Schultz called for her husband's firm to return the $63,000 it apparently got from the group to lobby for the bill.

A new political action committee has launched in Loudoun, and it has a familiar target.

The Loudoun Coalition, which formed in August, "stands in opposition to five incumbent supervisors who are standing for reelection," according to a Thursday press release announcing the group's formation.

If you live in Loudoun, you can probably guess which five they are talking about -- Stephen J. Snow (Dulles), Mick Staton Jr. (Sugarland Run), Jim E. Clem (Leesburg), Eugene A. Delgaudio (Sterling) and Bruce E. Tulloch (Potomac), the board's pro-growth Republicans.

"Sounds like one more guy having fun attacking the Republicans," Staton said Friday.

The chairman's race in Loudoun County is heating up -- but not in the way you might think.

Three-term incumbent Scott K. York (I), who has been chairman for the past two terms, started off his campaign for reelection this fall not by attacking his opponent but by going after five of his fellow supervisors, all Republicans, whom he has dubbed "the gang of five."