Elections have consequences, and one of the major consequences of November’s legislative races in Virginia is a tie between Republicans and Democrats in the state Senate, which gives Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling the deciding vote. After successfully navigating his ambitious $4 billion transportation package through a split legislature last year, Gov. Bob McDonnell now has an excellent chance of getting his latest transportation plan through the General Assembly intact. This is good news for long-suffering Northern Virginia commuters who, more than any other residents of the commonwealth, have borne the brunt of the state’s neglect of its roads.
An analysis by Richmond-based Chmura Economics found that the $4 billion investment will grow Virginia’s economy by $13 billion when fully implemented, creating 104,000 new jobs. It leverages just $97 million of state funds to build a $1 billion, public-private high-occupancy toll/high-occupancy vehicle lane project on Interstate 95 that increases capacity on one of Virginia’s most congested highways. Unlike the open-ended Dulles Rail project, the fixed-price contract insulates taxpayers from rising costs. Part of that project — a new flyover ramp eliminating a bottleneck at the I-66/Capital Beltway intersection — opens today.
The governor unveiled his innovative new plan, which does not include a tax increase, at a meeting of 700 transportation professionals in Norfolk. The plan allocates a higher percentage of the state sales tax to transportation, generating some $110 million for much-needed highway maintenance funding. Virginia would be one of the first states to use tax-increment financing, commonly used by localities to pay the debt service on local projects. Dedicating 1 percent of any new state tax revenues collected as a result of a major transportation improvement to fund future construction projects is critical, since Virginia is projected to run out of road-building money by 2017.
Predictably enough, Democratic state chairman Brian Moran panned the idea, accusing the governor of trying to divert money from “core services.” But transportation is a core service, every bit as deserving of priority funding as education or public safety. Richmond’s prior refusal to consider it a priority has led to the predictable hardening of Northern Virginia’s major arterials and the commuting nightmares that have become so familiar in this region. Under the fiscal conservative McDonnell’s steady hand at the helm, state revenue increased 19 of the last 20 months, with unemployment down from 7.2 percent in 2010 to 6.4 percent today. The governor is to be commended for setting aside a larger slice of the bigger pie for transportation.
