Following last month’s release of Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s opinion on Gloucester County’s use of the 1 percent additional sales tax, the Gloucester Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in Tuesday night’s meeting to alter the county’s use of the tax to align with Herring’s opinion.

The board’s decision means that it will have to adjust more than $2 million in its current operating budget that had been earmarked from sales tax revenues to pay for school debt mitigation, and likely make cuts elsewhere to offset this figure.

In his Dec. 21, 2021 statement, Herring said that “it is my opinion that the Gloucester County Sales Tax revenues are to be used to fund capital projects for ‘new construction or major renovation’ of Gloucester’s public schools and not for debt mitigation.”

The 1 percent sales tax was enacted by the General Assembly as a way for schools to fund new construction and major renovation. When developing the 2021-2022 budget, then-County Administr...