The Virginia Senate on Wednesday quickly passed a gas-tax increase that would notch up the levy on a gallon of fuel by a cent a year for six years, sending the proposal to the Republican-controlled House widely expected to kill it. All 21 Democrats in the chamber’s slim majority voted for the tax measure, while 16 Republicans opposed it.
The bill essentially would match the revenue raised under Gov. Tim Kaine’s proposed $1.1 billion transportation plan but includes a different combination of tax increases to close the expanding deficit in highway maintenance and pay for new road and transit projects.
Kaine’s plan, which is sitting in a House committee, does not include a gas-tax increase.
The Senate’s proposal, championed by ardent gas-tax proponent and Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, would raise $719 million in statewide revenue by fiscal 2015 through the 6-cent gas-tax increase, as well as by increasing the auto titling tax by 0.5 percent and the sales tax by 0.25 percent, excluding food and drugs.
Saslaw’s plan would pump another $381 million into Northern Virginia, which would be subject to a 0.5 percent sales tax increase, a 40-cent per $100 value increase on the tax on selling a home and a $5-per-day levy on staying at a hotel.
It also includes a 0.5 percent reduction in the sales tax on food, which proponents hope will make it more palatable in the House.
“For the average family, the savings on the food tax, which for an average family of four would be $50 a year, will more than offset the increase in the gasoline tax,” said Senate Democratic Caucus Chairman Mary Margaret Whipple, of Arlington.
Still, both Saslaw’s and Kaine’s proposals face long odds in the House of Delegates, leaving lawmakers with dim hopes of passing any large-scale transportation package during the special session.
“The smart money is on, at best, a small area of agreement, or no agreement at all,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political science professor from the University of Mary Washington.
Farnsworth expected any compromise to be centered on a patch for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, the two regions that won millions of dollars in new transportation funding last year only to see the mechanism for collecting those taxes thrown out by the Virginia Supreme Court in February.
The House Rules Committee is expected to consider Kaine’s bill this morning after debating it Wednesday. Saslaw’s plan also has been sent to that committee.
