The Club for Growth

Phillip Rodokanakis


 

 

Supersize Me!

Jerry Kilgore's diet for Virginia's clogged transportation arteries is like eating a salad with a helping of ice cream. Tim Kaine's nutritional plan is worse: all burgers and fries.


 

"I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol" -- Stephen Wright

 

Just about everyone in Virginia agrees that transportation should be a priority for our state government. With traffic in our state stuck in permanent gridlock, you would imagine that our gubernatorial candidates have given this problem some serious thought and are proposing new, enlightened ideas to get us moving again.

 

Unfortunately, that is not the case!

 

Jerry Kilgore, the Republican candidate, has come up with a plan he calls “Transportation for the 21st Century: Keeping People and Commerce Moving.” Kilgore’s plan calls for some common sense, long overdue ideas, such as protecting the Transportation Trust Fund so that greedy politicians can no longer raid it to fund their pet projects.

 

It also promotes Public-Private Partnerships as a means to build new roads faster and more economically and prioritizing the use of technology in developing The Virginia Intelligent Transportation System.

 

Unfortunately, Kilgore's plan also contains two terrible proposals. The plan proposes legislation to collect “Abuser Fees” from traffic offenders. This resurrects a bill proposed by Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, and Del. Tom Rust, R-Herndon, in 2005. This bill was a bad idea when it was first proposed -- see “Why Not a Ticket for Tax Abuse?” -- and it still is.

 

Kilgore also proposes creating Regional Transportation Authorities to be empowered with real decision- making powers. The idea of local bodies implementing solutions to address local traffic bottlenecks makes sense. On the other hand, creating these authorities will only add several layers to an already bloated bureaucracy.

 

Kilgore further compounds the problem by proposing to give to these authorities the power to issue bonds and hold taxpayer referenda to fund new roads, bridge, and mass transit projects. In other words, they will be vested with separate taxing authorities.

 

The idea of entrusting unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats with taxing authority goes against everything this country stands for. This argument was settled when Americans revolted against “taxation without representation.”

 

Tim Kaine, the Democrat candidate, provides an unusually long and wordy proposal on his website regarding Transportation. The bulk of this writing, however, makes empty statements, such as “Tim Kaine is a proven leader on transportation with a record of getting results.”

 

We also get this profound declaration: “The first step is to acknowledge that our transportation system is in crisis” – well, duh!

 

One of Kaine's solutions is based on encouraging local public transit. We are told that public transit systems take Virginians on a half a million trips every day. This number sounds impressive, but it is grossly misleading because it is presented devoid of any other comparisons.

 

The 2000 census for all commuter trips across the Commonwealth puts Virginia’s share of public transportation at 3.6 percent (including the use of taxicabs). In contrast, commuting trips taken by car account for 89.8 percent (including car pools).

 

Until this week, no one really understood what Kaine meant by saying that he would encourage local public transit. At the candidates’ debate sponsored by the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce earlier this week, we got a glimpse of what we can expect under a Kaine administration.

 

This is what Kaine had to say on mass transit financing: "A couple of things on mass transit. I believe the state funding formulas are such that they should be adjusted so that public and mass transit options receive the same subsidy percentages as road projects."

 

If you thought that insufficient funds are presently dedicated to highway construction, under a Kaine administration, even less money will be made available for this purpose. So even though less than about 4 percent of all commuters are using any form of mass transit, Tim Kaine is prepared to more than triple the money available for mass transit at the expense of highway construction.

 

According to Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, the current breakdown from the Transportation Trust fund is as follows: 14.7 percent of the revenues get set aside for mass transit while 78.7 percent get set aside for highway construction. Under a Kaine administration, both mass transit and highway construction would equally receive 46.7 percent.

 

If we are stuck in gridlock now, wait and see what happens under a Kaine administration! We will end-up reminiscing about the good-old days when traffic on our highways moved at less than 35 mph.

 

Some Kainiacs hurried to damage control mode by claiming that Kaine really meant to change a provision in state law which gives local governments incentives to widen roads rather than to invest in mass transit. But what these prolific apologizers miss is that the Transportation Trust Fund is like a fixed pie—you cut a bigger slice for mass transit, there is less left for highway construction.

 

No one doubts that our transportation arteries are clogged. Unfortunately, our candidates can only come up with proposals that compare to putting commuters on a high-cholesterol diet.  

 

-- September 19, 2005

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phillip Rodokanakis, a Certified Fraud Examiner, lives in Oak Hill. He is the managing partner of U.S. Data Forensics, LLC, a company specializing in Computer Forensics, Fraud Investigations, and Litigation Support. He is also the President of the Virginia Club for Growth.

 

He can be reached by e-mail at phil_r@cox.net.

 

Read his profile here.

 


 

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