How could a state that’s running a $1.5 billion surplus (thanks to a $1.4 billion tax hike two years ago) and plans to increase overall spending 19 percent over the next two years be embroiled in its third budget impasse in six years?
Welcome to Virginia, where the two Republican-controlled chambersof the General Assembly are the legislative equivalent of Cain and Abel. Their battle is ostensibly over transportation funding, but the real issues go deeper. For 20 years, under both Democratic and Republican leadership, the legislature bowed to political pressures and neglected the common good. Virginia’s inadequate transportation system is the sorry result.
Now it’s catch-up time, but instead of prioritizing transportation in the state’s ever-expanding budget, the Senate embedded $1 billion in additional taxes on gasoline, insurance, new cars and even home sales to pay for badly needed transportation improvements — and is currently holding the $72 billion biennial budget hostage unless the House of Delegates capitulates, as it unfortunately did in 2004. However, as House budget negotiator Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, pointed out, including tax increases in the budget that have not yet been enacted is prohibited by the Virginia Constitution. So the Senate’s game of chicken is on very shaky legal ground.
Far from being a passive observer, Gov. Tim Kaine has sided with the Senate’s tax-raisers and launched a massive campaign — including town hall meetings, radio ads and automated phone calling — to sway public opinion. This is the same Tim Kaine who promised during his campaign not to raise any taxes for transportation until a constitutional amendment that barred state officials from using the Transportation Trust Fund for any other purpose was in place. Well, the trust fund is still not secure — nor would be the $1 billion the Senate wants to raise in the name of transportation.
Not surprisingly, Kaine also vetoed two bills that would have reduced his power to appoint nine members to the powerful Commonwealth Transportation Board on the grounds that it would inject partisan politics into transportation planning. Hello! The CTB is already a political playpen for the well-connected. Northern Virginia’s seat was recently vacated by former FairfaxBoard of Surpervisors chair and Democratic activist Kate Hanley, whom Kaine picked to be secretary of the commonwealth. Hanley’s predecessors included Gilmore appointee and lobbyist J. Kenneth Klinge and developer Leonard “Hobie” Mitchell — all political operatives with no professional transportation expertise. No wonder Virginia’s transportation system is such a mess.
Veteran House conferee Vince Callahan, R-McLean, noted at a news conference earlier this month that “98.5 percent of the budget is being held hostage by the $1 billion per year taxes-for-transportation demands of the Senate and governor.” The House has come up with a reasonable compromise: Pass the budget so that local governments can get on with their planning, set up a $1.3 billion transportation reserve fund that includes special investment specifically targeted for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, and leave the spending details for a later special session.
This is a sensible plan that leaves state senators absolutely no excuse to come back from Richmond empty-handed again.
