Following in the ill-advised footprints of his predecessor Mark Warner, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine wants state legislators to join him in making residents pay higher taxes. If Kaine succeeds, he and the legislators once again will be enabled to avoid making the tough choices required by responsible budgeting.
There are at least three reasons to reject Kaine’s proposal for $1.1 billion annually in new taxes to pay for new transportation projects. First, Kaine’s proposal would be entirely unnecessary had he kept his campaign promise to spend tax dollars in Virginia’s Transportation Trust Fund on new transportation projects, as its enabling legislation intended.
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Instead, Kaine and Virginia state legislators have diverted $1.2 billion from the fund to pay for road maintenance projects and spending increases for education and social welfare.
Second, Kaine’s tax increases are excessive and unrealistic. It would be one thing if the governor proposed limited increases to cover the approximate $400 million transportation funding gap created when the state Supreme Court recently — and properly, in our view — ruled that the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority has no taxing power because it is not accountable to voters.
But Kaine wants taxpayers to cough up nearly three times the amount of the gap. Particularly ill timed is his $1 increase in taxes for every $400 of a home’s sale price, which would mean an extra $1,000 levy on the $400,000-plus homes that are typical in this area. When the national housing market is tanking, it makes no sense to make home sales even more expensive.
And why does Kaine think voters in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads will now favor his proposal for a 1-cent sales tax increase when they overwhelmingly rejected that idea in 2002?
Third, Kaine and many state legislators have been on an irresponsible spending spree in recent years. Unfortunately, they mostly chose to exclude from their generosity the building of new roads that are so desperately needed in Northern Virginia.
The general fund budget has grown from $12.4 billion in 2004 to just under $17 billion this year. Only about 40 percent of that increase can be attributed to inflation. In other words, Kaine, Warner and bipartisan majorities of the legislature have only themselves to blame for Virginia’s present fiscal crisis. Unfortunately, Virginia isn’t the region’s only jurisdiction in which officials are running “tax hikes are our only option” con games. It’s time for state and local officials to get serious about genuine fiscal discipline andtruth-in-spending, and to stop demanding that taxpayers keep bailing them out.
