RICHMOND — The traditional battle lines of Virginia’s split-party legislature re-emerged Tuesday little more than a month before lawmakers go back to work, with high-ranking lawmakers from each camp predicting little hope for the others’ policy proposals on taxes and transportation.
During a panel discussion at the Capitol in Richmond, Del. Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, and Sen. Janet Howell, D-Reston, offered a vision of a 2010 session dominated by partisan logjam.
Democrats control the Senate by a slight margin, while Republican will have a wide majority in the House and control the governor’s mansion. The divide means legislators, like in years past, will have a far easier time killing bills than passing them.
Cox, a top-ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, urged Gov. Tim Kaine to leave any tax increases out of his upcoming two-year budget proposal.
Kaine is expected to call for at least some increases, which could come in the form of repealing tax breaks for auto dealers or rolling back cuts to the state’s car tax. Cox suggested the proposals would gain no traction in the Republican-controlled House nor under a new Republican governor.
“The reason for that is elections have consequences, and in this election, Bob McDonnell ran on a platform of not raising taxes,” Cox said.
Likewise, Howell, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, gave long odds to McDonnell’s plan to sell off the state’s liquor monopoly to fund transportation projects, which he estimates would generate an immediate $500 million windfall, a figure that is hotly disputed.
But at issue is the $100 million in profits that the liquor monopoly puts into Virginia’s budget each year, money the Senate would be unwilling to part with as revenues grow increasingly scarce.
“It’s very unpopular in the Senate,” Howell said. “We view it as a revenue stream that’s very important.”
McDonnell, who spoke later in the day, offered a brighter take on the chances of his liquor store sell-off.
“The fact that it’s been proposed and failed before doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “It’s never been proposed with the leadership of the governor.”
