Controversial Beltway project shouldn’t be priority The proposed Tri-County highway is a new outer beltway. It’s expensive, it doesn’t relieve traffic on Interstates 95 or 66 or on the Beltway, and by opening new areas to development, it makes commuting traffic worse, not better. It would connect I-95 in Prince William County to Route 50 in Loudoun with an ultimate goal of connecting into Maryland. After a long battle, it looks like the Virginia General Assembly will approve Gov. Bob McDonnell’s borrow-and-spend transportation plan.
The governor’s plan does not include an outer beltway — but behind the scenes it’s a different story. In a meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board last week, the governor’s Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton and two CTB members announced a renewed effort to prioritize the Tri-County highway.
In public, the governor has offered a list of 900 road projects that might be funded by the new debt — a list that does not include the controversial outer beltway project around D.C.
But during last week’s CTB meeting, Connaughton brought up an issue not on the published agenda, asking two of the CTB members, Gary Garczynski and Doug Koelemay, if they had a resolution to offer. After describing a new highway connection that follows the route of the proposed Tri-County highway, they said that the resolution was not quite ready yet, but that they hoped it would be by the next CTB meeting in March.
Connaughton, who used to chair the Prince William Board of Supervisors, then said: “You guys would never make it on the Prince William County Board of Supervisors; we live for bushwhacking people.”
Bushwhacked (ambushed) is exactly how one feels. It’s no way to conduct the public’s business. First, the administration had the secretary of transportation hold out a list of projects that was a key to winning many legislators’ support for more debt and spending. Then, off the radar screen from the legislature, the media and the public, the administration is maneuvering the revival and addition of one of the most controversial highways in the state.
Contact members of the CTB and tell them not to prioritize the Tri-County highway and your legislators with the same.
Michael Ragland
Triangle, Va.
Spending to protect Americans’ health is necessary
Re: “Believe it or not, it’s morning in America, again,” Feb. 27
As the head swim coach of a U.S. national team that will compete in Portugal this summer, no one is more enthusiastic about American greatness than I. But to shroud patriotism with inaccurate facts is irresponsible.
Whatever one might say about the House Republican effort to balance the budget, there is clearly no “momentum” behind the several hundred extraneous policy riders that were attached to the House spending bill in the bogus name of “balancing the budget.” These riders were literally a wish list of industry polluter demands, including attacks on the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Equal Access to Justice Act, and hazardous waste law.
Not only would these provisions hurt American health, but they would also cost the federal government more money in the long run. The Senate and president are right to reject them. When the new House leadership stops overreaching and actually implements fiscal responsibility on the corporate sponsors that endorsed them for office, then we will know a new dawn has risen. Until then, the House effort reeks of hypocrisy.
William J. Snape III
Washington
Editor’s note: Snape is senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity.
