Still not convinced

Warrenton Mayor George Fitch, who has written us, and, presumably, the entire town council, are unhappy with a recent editorial (“Open house,” Dec. 23) in which, he feels, this newspaper unjustly accused the council of underhanded tactics in regard to a complicated deal to secure historic preservation tax credits to fund operations at a still-to-be-opened Mosby museum in Old Town.

In our view, the editorial simply wondered if pursuing these tax credits was really entirely proper, since municipalities like Warrenton are not allowed to use them for their own direct benefit — which is exactly what is in store for these funds once we get them — and because they were originally conceived for economic development, not operational expenses.

In the interest of fairness to the council and the mayor, the deal that Warrenton is preparing to engage in — leasing the property to the Partnership for Warrenton Foundation, which in turn will lease it to a new organization called Grey Ghost LLC, which, in turn, will lease the property back to the town — is, apparently, a concoction that is often used, which, in fact, may even be considered standard operating procedure in cases like this across the commonwealth.

We did not make that clear in our editorial as we should have done.

However, the arrangement continues to raise questions, prominent among them why state legislators don’t change regulations that are so routinely subverted, thus eliminating the Byzantine arrangements that are simply ludicrous.

For another, since towns are not allowed to buy, sell and otherwise trade these financial instruments, investors have to be brought into the picture. Thus there is an outside shareholder in Grey Ghost LLC who now has a finger in the taxpayer-funded pie, which is not, we feel fairly certain, what most of us intend when we mail our checks to Richmond.

We don’t really want to get in a spitting contest with the mayor and council, but behind this entire enterprise is the notion that we can own and operate a museum without it costing Warrenton taxpayers anything — well, anything other than the three-quarters of a million or so they have already invested — by using tax credits.

Tax credits, this scenario apparently concludes, don’t come out of the pockets of every Virginia taxpayer.

What we have essentially done is found a way to make Virginia’s other taxpayers foot a bill that we have grown increasingly unwilling to pay ourselves.

Warrenton officials insist the local taxpayers have an asset that is worth more than the investment.

Maybe. We have to wonder how many tourists will flock to Warrenton to visit a home that John Mosby lived in for a scant 24 months a fully 12 years after the war had ended.

It’s a Civil War museum, and tourists will visit, we suppose, but. we could have as easily — and a great deal more cheaply — opened it in an empty storefront on or off Main Street. We could have as easily — and much more cheaply — left it to private enterprise to undertake, after which the principals could have collected their historic preservation tax credits in a perfectly transparent manner.

The 1999 purchase of the house was ill conceived. Sinking another $250,000 of local taxpayers’ money and thousands more from private donations into its renovation was throwing good money after bad.

Now we’re hot on the trail of state money. Surely there’s some way we can get our hands in the federal till?