The Virginia General Assembly’s special session on transportation didn’t accomplish anything in the way of transportation funding, but it wasn’t a total disaster. At least taxpayers now know who’s on their side. Despite enough political spin to make an elephant dizzy, it clearly isn’t Gov. Tim Kaine, who failed to propose a new funding plan of his own, or state senators who voted to kill the House of Delegates’ $2.5 billion transportation package.
After passing the largest single highway financing plan in 20 years, state House members are now accused of being “ideologues and anti-tax fundamentalists,” as our news neighbor here on 15th Street W. said in a recent editorial. Why? Because delegates also refused to raise taxes while the commonwealth is sitting on a $339 million surplus. That’s really what the post-special session histrionics are all about.
Taxes were also what the prior budget impasse was about. Despite his campaign promise, Kaine proposed a $1 billion transportation tax increase during the regular session, a bid that was seen and raised to $1.8 billion by the state Senate. When the state House balked, pro-tax senators tried to embed their tax increase in the state budget, an unconstitutional move that ultimately failed.
Speaker William Howell, R-Stafford, who shepherded the comprehensive 23-bill package through his chamber last month, clearly outlined the state House position: “Substantial progress can be achieved by having state government live within its means, by prioritizing the billions of dollars taxpayers send to Richmond, and by treating transportation in our budgets like the core service it is.”
Exactly. While not perfect, the state House package also included bills to reform the Virginia Department of Transportation and update the commonwealth’s 70-year-old land-use policies. The state Senate’s refusal to consider anything except a massive tax increase set back those efforts as well.
Because neither the governor nor the state Senate bothered to put any new proposals on the table during the special session, their only option was to either accept or reject the state House’s bipartisan funding package. In doing so, Sen. John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, and like-minded members of his finance committee also killed another lane on I-95 from Newington to the Occoquan Bridge, money to widen I-66 outside the Beltway, $15 million for more Metrorail cars, $27 million for VRE and $118 million for preliminary engineering on new transportation projects throughout the state.
And they’re calling state House members obstructionists?
Transportation has not been a top priority in Virginia for two decades. It’s been easier for the governor and lawmakers of both parties to spend all of the state’s resources — $74 billion in the current biennial budget — on demands made by special interest groups instead of setting aside the massive amounts of capital transportation improvements require. Frustrated drivers in traffic-choked Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads don’t have an organized lobby in Richmond looking out for their interests. They’ve expected their elected officials to look out for them.
But Kaine and members of the state Senate let them down big-time.
