The tug-of-war over Virginia’s $550 surplus has begun. Remember that by definition, a surplus is money left over after all spending priorities have been met.
In 2004, Northern Virginia voters put Tim Kaine in the governor’s mansion. “My first act [as governor] was to hold town hall meetings in key locations around the state to discuss transportation solutions,” Kaine wrote in a February article for the Democratic Leadership Council entitled “How I Won.”
But Kaine still hasn’t come up with long-awaited “solutions” for traffic-weary N.Va. commuters. In fact, his failure to designate any funds for transportation during last summer’s special session — which he specifically called to deal with this very problem — was a disappointing harbinger of things to come.
The governor recently recommended that just $161 million of the surplus be spent on transportation — a core function of state government — even though he acknowledged in August that the commonwealth needs to spend at least $1 billion more annually to address its maintenance and construction needs adequately. The Republican leadership in the House of Delegates wants to spend at least half of the surplus on transportation. Sorry, but that’s still not enough.
A group of Northern Virginia Republicans — including Dels. Dave Albo and Tim Hugo from Fairfax County, and Jeff Frederick, Scott Ligamfelter, Bob Marshall and Michele McQuigg from Prince William — are demanding that 100 percent of the surplus and any new state spending be used to address the commonwealth’s No. 1 problem.
Beware of efforts to spend the surplus on education, health care, environmental protection and law enforcement — which all benefited from a record-breaking $2 billion tax increase under Kaine’s predecessor. It’s now transportation’s turn.
When traffic gets really bad, desperate drivers and stressed businesses demand relief. Some are even willing to pay more taxes — even though they still haven’t received their money’s worth from the taxes they already pay. Unfortunately, such thinking creates a perverse incentive: If Richmond allows traffic to get really intolerable, it will get more money to spend.
This dynamic seems to be the motivation behind Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer’s inexplicable order to stall the opening of an already completed new interchange at Route 28 and Sterling Boulevard in Loudoun County for at least a year. In an Oct. 27 letter to VDOT Commissioner David Ekern, Homer cited “unique safety issues” for delaying the opening at the busy intersection, which handles 100,000 cars a day.
But public outcry forced VDOT to back down. “Exactly 30 days after I went public, VDOT took the barrels down,” Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, R-Sterling, told The Examiner. “This used to be the worst intersection in the county, with two or three accidents per week. Now there are none.”
By the way, during his gubernatorial campaign Kaine also pledged not to approve any new taxes for transportation until a constitutional amendment was passed to prohibit future depletions of the Transportation Trust Fund. We intend to hold him to that promise.
