Insofar as the Department of Defense is concerned, Traci Voelke is a Gold Star spouse.
Her husband, Maj. Paul Voelke — an Army Ranger — was killed in 2012 when the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle he was riding in crashed en route to a combat mission. It was his fifth combat tour in Afghanistan.
But because her husband wasn’t killed by enemy fire, Voelke isn’t eligible for a state property tax exemption currently available only to surviving spouses of service members “killed in action” or who were rendered 100 percent disabled.
“Had our spouses survived these terrible accidents, returned home, been deemed 100% disabled and later died, we would later qualify,” Voelke said. “It is very inequitable [sic].”
Virginia voters have an opportunity to change that this election season.
If passed, the lone constitutional amendment on the ballot across the Commonwealth would extend the property tax exemption to the surviving spouses of service members “killed in the line of duty,” a broader category that would encompass families like the Voelkes.
In a recent interview with the Free Press, State Sen. Jeremy McPike (D-29) said that approximately 185 families across the Commonwealth would potentially be affected.
“It’s really important to fill in that gap in fairness to all of those families whose veterans have paid the ultimate sacrifice,” McPike said. “It really is a technical fix to make sure those families are covered.”
McPike, whose district includes part of Stafford County, patroned SJ 231, the Senate version of the bill that met the requirements to become a referendum. In order for a bill to become a ballot initiative, it must pass twice — in two separate General Assembly sessions with an election in between.
“It’s kind of tough,” he said of the process of getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot. “It’s a multi-year process.”
During a February 2023 meeting of the House Amendments and Other Matters subcommittee, McPike laid out a case for changing the state’s constitution. He was joined in supporting the measure by spouses like Voelke as well as Jay Martz, who serves on the Virginia Joint Leadership Council of Veterans Service Organizations.
Beyond some disagreement on semantics, then-Speaker-of-the-house Todd Gilbert questioned what separates service members killed in the line of duty from other breadwinners who might befall a tragic accident.
“If we expand this out to people who die in a motor vehicle accident, there are lots of folks who aren’t necessarily serving in the military who are no less affected by that.
In response, Martz said that the amendment “is filling a gap, not expanding the program.”
“I’ve been on many bases and if a young soldier drives a motorcycle had a little too much to drink over the weekend and crashed and tore himself up, that is not in the line of duty,” Martz said. “This [designation] would be for people directly doing their job.”
When Susan Doepp testified before the House Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee this past January prior to the second passage of the bill, the Stafford County resident made it clear that her intention was not “to pull on heartstrings.”
Doepp told legislators that her husband died in a line-of-duty accident while preparing to deploy to Afghanistan in 2006, leaving behind four children — ages 12, 10, 7 and 4 at the time.
“I do not relieve any limited tax relief,” Doepp said. “If he had survived long enough to deploy and been struck by an enemy missile instead of a random accident, I’d be receiving tax relief… It’s these gross disparities in the coverage of unmarried surviving spouses that we’re trying to fix with this amendment.”
McPike acknowledges that legislators likely didn’t anticipate such edge cases when the state constitution was written. But he hopes that the accounts shared will spur voters to make amends.
“I think there just wasn’t an understanding of why there was a gap, why there was an issue,” he said. “And hearing the stories from the families was really important.”
Check out the Free Press voter guide, which includes the full text of the referendum as well as other important information.
