Gov. Tim Kaine will begin talks today with leading Republican lawmakers about possible changes to the mammoth transportation funding bill legislators approved last month.
Kaine has spent the past week traveling around the state, meeting with local officials to gather their thoughts on the legislation. Local leaders do not like many aspects of the 105-page bill, including the section that requires Northern Virginia localities to vote for tax and fee increases that will generate $400 million a year for the region.
“The governor now has had face-to-face meetings with elected leaders from 70-plus of Virginia’s 134 local governments, and he has yet to hear a single local official urge adoption of the Republican plan as it now stands,” gubernatorial spokesman Kevin Hall said.
Kaine, a Democrat, has threatened to veto the bill if the legislature rejects too many of his proposed changes. Republicans, however, counter that this might be the governor’s only shot at signing a transportation funding bill before he leaves office in 2011.
Kaine’s biggest problem with the bill is that it relies on $120 million to $180 million a year from the general fund to pay off $2.5 billion in bonds. The governor would prefer coming up with a new revenue source, such as a higher sales tax on vehicles.
Republicans, however, insist the general fund component is not negotiable because it will limit future wasteful government spending. They see transportation as a basic function that should be at least partially paid for out of the general fund. Using the general fund also allows them to avoid raising any taxes, a major factor for many conservative anti-tax lawmakers.
Republicans emphasized Wednesday that $2.2 billion has been used from the general fund for transportation during the past 16 years, which includes a long stretch when Democrats controlled the Legislature.
“It looks to me as though the Democrats’ objection to the use of general fund revenues for transportation is based on politics and not policy,” said House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.
