A Virginia House of Delegates panel known for sending tax bills to their graves could be the first — and possibly last — stop for Gov. Tim Kaine’s $1.1 billion transportation funding package, legislators and staffers said.
Democrats worry the House Finance Committee will scuttle any statewide tax increase to pay for transportation before reaching the floor during the upcoming special session June 23.
“The Finance Committee in the House has been stacked with ‘no-increases in revenue, period,’ ” said Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, a former state transportation secretary and a member of the panel. “And I’m afraid that’s what will happen.”
Watts said she remembered bloc votes in years past to kill similar bills. While the political landscape has shifted — the chamber’s Republican majority lost strength in the 2007 elections — the GOP retains control of the committee structure and determines the destination of bills.
Kaine’s plan, announced Monday, was met with instant opposition from top Republicans, who said it was overly burdensome to taxpayers in the middle of a recession, and only lukewarm praise from Kaine’s Democratic allies.
“I think it’s the basis for a rational conversation,” said Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly, a Democrat. “I applaud the governor for sticking with this issue.”
The governor’s proposal would raise just under $1.1 billion a year by fiscal 2014 through statewide tax increases on buying and registering a vehicle and selling a house, as well as a regional-based sales tax increase in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The new revenue would help Virginia catch up with its mounting highway maintenance gap and allow for new road and rail construction.
All tax bills, one way or another, go to House Finance, said Jeff Ryer, a staffer for House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem. Ryer saw nothing in Kaine’s proposal that would justify sending it to another committee.
Asked whether the committeewould be used as a vehicle to kill the tax package, Ryer said, “I don’t think that’s fair, entirely.
“The committee does have Democrats on it.”
