Whether it's on the national, state or local levels, the subject of job creation usually plays a outsized role in political campaigns.

The race for Gainesville District supervisor is no different.

Suzanne Miller is focusing her candidacy on jobs, government transparency and curbing development in the Rural Crescent.

The engineering project manager at BAE Systems and mother from Haymarket is one of five candidates competing in the Republican primary for the Board of County Supervisors seat that extends from northern Manassas to the Loudoun County border.

"I'm a citizen leader committed to not being swayed by any allegiance to any one group," she said during an interview June 28 in Gainesville.

Economy

Miller supports increased communication with the Northern Virginia Technology Council and, when they are available, applying the recommendations of the state's next strategic plan for job growth along with its research and technology road map to the county level.

She said she would use those recommendations to bring science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs to western Prince William County, particularly in the Innovation area along the Route 234 bypass.

"We can't be an economy of just servicing," said Miller.

As is common in Republican circles, Miller stresses tax cutting as a way to encourage businesses to start up and expand. She mentioned that she supports raising the Business, Professional and Occupational License (BPOL) tax floor, which is set at $200,000 for Fiscal Year 2012.

That means businesses that make less than $200,000 in gross receipts per year will not have to pay the tax but those that make more than that do have to pay it

Different sectors of the economy pay different rates on the tax.

In order to offset the potential revenue loss to the county from raising it above $200,000, Miller advocates reducing the pensions of future county government employees by charging each employee a 5 percent "member contribution," which is what the state does with its employees under new legislation.

She emphasized that her plan would not affect current employees and the concept of it is consistent with how the commonwealth works with its employees.

One issue Miller acknowledged that comes from this plan is that reducing county pensions will not entirely offset the the loss of revenue from raising the BPOL floor. With that in mind, she stated in an e-mail that "streamlining government services and outsourcing government services to the private sector" is another way to reduce government cost.

"I'm targeting areas with overlapping redundancy," said Miller, later adding, "As a supervisor, my job is to dissect that budget."

She proposed, as an example, allowing private companies to manage golf courses currently run by the Park Authority.

Facts and figures

At this phase of a campaign for county government, non-incumbents tend to float broad ideas without providing exact dollar figures to back up their claims.

For instance, Miller's primary opponent Peter Candland mentioned that part of his way to offset tax cuts would be to expand the tax base by bringing in more jobs.

Figuring out how much money the county would lose from cutting taxes simply requires statistics and math.

Proposing that revenue losses could be offset by concepts like "growing the economy" and "streamlining government services" without providing hard numbers (i.e.: how many jobs need to be created; how many positions need to be outsourced) creates the impression that those candidates' ideas are based on hypothetical scenarios instead of statistics.

In short, ideas can be complicated to calculate without the dollars and figures to back them up.

Transparency

Miller took a stance at odds with Prince William County Chairman Corey Stewart (R) in that she is critical of the county's independent audit agency.

"Oversight has to be done carefully," she said, so it is not a "burden" to the employees.

One of her basic tenants of transparency is that she said she wants county officials to include a breakdown of the county budget by sector in a mail piece.

She said the county's recent mailer "Prince William County Reports Volume 2" does not "show the big picture" without graphs showing citizens how their money is being spent in a way that is "readily accessible."

Such a graph is available at pwcgov.org on page 13 of the Fiscal Year 2012 budget summary. Users click the "Government", "Board of County Supervisors" and "Publications" links to find it. A separate graph for revenue sources is on page 12.

Growth and immigration

Miller takes what could be considered a hard-line stance against building more houses or businesses in the Rural Crescent.

She said she would have voted against the Avendale project between Nokesville and Bristow despite the proffers attached to it, including new football fields.

"You can't please everyone," she said. "We're going to have to make tough choices."

On the issue of telling current land owners in the Rural Crescent that may want to sell their farms or other lands to developers for residential build-out, Miller said, "Those citizens can get as upset as they want; I'm going to vote against it."

During her interview, Miller spoke only broadly about Silver Lake. In a follow-up e-mail, Miller stated that she "would have voted to support the Board resolution transferring Silver Lake to the Park Authority" instead of the Bull Run Mountain Conservancy.

Like her primary opponents Candland and Martha Hendley said in previous interviews, Miller supports the county's Rule of Law resolution, which makes immigration checks mandatory for anyone arrested within the county, but said would not change any by either adding or retracting anything to it.

On transportation, Miller took a nuanced stance on extending the Virginia Railway Express west from Manassas.

"The decision on where to put the stop must be weighed with the consideration of not overly congesting our roads getting to that stop," she said. "I advocate a stop in the Gainesville-Haymarket area that serves the local people."

She did not rule out a station stopping in either community; rather, she said she wanted to find out the results of all accompanying studies.

As an alternative form of mass transportation, Miller at the time was not familiar with the concept of bus rapid transit, which requires specific types of buses that run in their own lanes instead of sharing lanes with traffic.

In an e-mail afterward, she wrote that "developing a BRT lane on I-66 is not a realistic plan at this point nor is bringing the [M]etro further west than Vienna."

Miller summed up her candidacy by saying voters should support her because, "I have a lot of experience behind me with a background in engineering and teaching and in the community, not only to be a compassionate leader... but I think I bring to the table a diverse skill set."