LTE: Board Wrong on Roadside Fundraising

The board of supervisors just banned roadside fundraising that has consistently raised almost $1 million each year for research into a cure for muscular dystrophy, a medical problem that attacks mostly children. I was part of a bipartisan majority on the prior board that rejected such a ban, continuing to allow our county firefighters and medical technicians to run their “Fill the Boot” campaigns every year. None of us liked the fact that, to keep the campaign going, we also had to allow less noble panhandlers on the same streets. But, we allowed them all, in the name of doing the most overall good at the least taxpayer cost.

To see the new, all-Republican board kill this worthy project is doubly galling, since they have not only cut off millions of dollars from going to promising medical research, but they have cut it off by banning purely private donations. After listening for years now to Republican claims that healthcare should come from private charity, and not the government, to see our Republican county government use its power to prevent private charity from reaching healthcare at all makes me wonder if their most extreme critics are right to suggest that Republicans only want the wealthy to have medical care.

It is one form of cold-hearted fiscal conservatism to say that the government shouldn't pay for anyone's healthcare. But it is the lowest form of outright cruelty to make it illegal to ask for charity at the same time.

Stevens Miller
Broadlands

[Editor’s note: Stevens Miller is a former member of the Loudoun Board of Supervisors.]