Fairfax County let its school buildings rot for four decades, and now officials want working families to pay a higher sales tax to fix the mess they allowed to happen.

The Fairfax County School Board unanimously voted Thursday to ask the Board of Supervisors to put a 1% sales tax hike referendum on the ballot. The state legislature gave all Virginia localities the power to do this in its latest budget, signed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger. The money would go toward school renovation and construction — because the county can't seem to manage either on its current budget.

Here's the scale of the failure: Fairfax has a $400 million deferred maintenance backlog. County policy says schools should be renovated every 25 years. The actual cycle is 42 years. More than half of Virginia's school facilities are at least 50 years old, according to a 2021 state Department of Education report. The statewide construction and maintenance backlog was estimated at $25 billion that same year.

That's not a funding problem. That's a management problem — and a priority problem. Billions flow into these systems, and the roofs still leak.

Board member Karl Frisch said the board confronts "aging buildings, deferred maintenance, rising construction costs and the growing gap between what our students deserve and what our capital funding can support." Board member Melanie Meren called the referendum "relief from the relentless use of homeowner tax to fill the gap from the state to fund our public school facilities."

Translation: property taxes are already squeezing homeowners, so now they want to squeeze everyone at the register instead.

The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot's editorial board cheered the tax as a "useful tool" and acknowledged — then quickly waved past — the fact that sales taxes hit low-income people hardest, since they spend a larger share of their income on necessities. The editorial framed the whole thing as responsible governance, barely mentioning that Virginia's $25 billion backlog accumulated on the watch of the same officials now demanding more money.

WTOP, by contrast, reported the straightforward fact that even the county's top elected official isn't on board — yet. Board of Supervisors Chair Jeff McKay said "now is not the right time," citing rising costs families already face. "This enabling authority was only granted by the General Assembly a few weeks ago," McKay said. "It has not yet been reviewed by our Board or vetted with the public." Loudoun County's Phyllis Randall said she'd support letting voters decide but added, "Personally, I don't want to see a sales tax increase right now. Financial times are very, very tough."

Nine rural Virginia jurisdictions already levy the 1% tax and have collected about $119 million combined, according to the Virginia Mercury. That's a fraction of the statewide backlog — which raises the question of where the rest of the money already went.

The pattern is familiar: government fails to maintain what it's responsible for, lets infrastructure decay across decades, then points to the decay as proof that taxpayers need to cough up more. No audit. No accountability. Just another bill for working people.

The referendum, if it ever reaches the ballot, at least lets voters decide. The open question is whether anyone will ask what happened to the billions already spent before asking for more.