Making
sense of transportation politics in Richmond
is easier if one understands a popular poker game.
The fast-growing diversion of Hold’em Poker just
may explain the transportation politics underway
in Richmond just now. It's certainly easier than
making sense of all the talk over user fees, tax
exemptions and shifting revenue streams.
Start
with the basic difference of Hold’em from other
forms of poker. Old-fashioned draw poker, now
relegated to poker’s second tier by casinos and
online players alike, has all players dealt a
complete five-card hand. The hand remains hidden
to others. After an opportunity to bet, players
then attempt to improve their hands by replacing
cards and betting a second time. Stud poker
improves on draw poker by dealing players a
combination of face-down cards and face-up cards.
Opponents get a little more insight into each
other’s hands, but still there are no common
cards.
Hierarchical,
insider politics on transportation can work that
way: No shared cards, no common interest. Over the
last decade, that kind of transportation poker has
dealt Virginia lots of folded hands.
By
contrast, Hold’em poker is community card poker,
a game in which each player shares face-up cards
with others in the game. Texas Hold’em employs
five community cards. Each player combines those
cards with two dealt down and known only to that
player to make the best five-card hand. Players
also get opportunities to bet after the first two
cards are dealt, after the first three community
card go down (this is known as the flop), after
the fourth community card is dealt (the turn) and
after the fifth community card (the river card) is
played.
This
kind of shared knowledge combined with knowledge
closely held is a characteristic of the more open,
networking politics of 21st century transportation
discussions now underway. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine
starts with a couple of cards that include
Richmond city government service and a plan to
produce $3.7 billion for transportation over the
next four years. As the community cards are dealt,
Gov. Kaine is betting that most of them will match
up with his proposals to lock up Transportation
Trust Fund monies, use more public-private
partnership deals on transportation projects,
expand technology solutions and raise user fees
and the sales tax on vehicle sales (to the five
percent sales tax level that applies to most
everything else).
The
Kaine Administration also shares Secretary of
Transportation Pierce R. Homer, who carries over
the transportation experience of the Warner
Administration and the dreams of a department that
has spent the last four years trying to get out of
a hole. “On time, on budget!” was the shout
from officials, engineers and a crowd earlier in
the month as another huge bridge opened as a part
of the Springfield Interchange Project.
Various
members of the Virginia General Assembly also are
trying to match up their hole cards with the
community cards dealt by Gov. Kaine and by a
Virginia Senate initiative based on a study group
chaired by Sen. Charles R. Hawkins, R-Chatham.
Senate cards look like $4 billion over four years
and substantially overlap the flop and the turn
cards from the Kaine Administration. The Senate
plan would dedicate auto insurance premium taxes,
apply the five percent sales tax to vehicle sales,
gasoline and auto repairs, lock up transportation
funds and encourage tolls, congestion pricing and
HOT lanes by the private sector.
House
Appropriations Committee Chairman Vincent F.
Callahan, Jr., R-McLean, and Senate Finance
Committee Chairman John Chichester,
R-Fredericksburg, sit at the opposite ends of
Northern Virginia’s side of the table with huge
numbers of chips at stake. House Transportation
Committee Chairman Leo C. Wardrup, R-Virginia
Beach, and Senate Transportation Committee
Chairman Marty E. Williams, R-Newport News, are at
the table from Hampton Roads with particular
interest in the river card. And Speaker William J.
Howell, R-Fredericksburg, and his House Republican
Caucus are making a decision whether to check the
$1 billion proposed annually or to raise.
Think
poker now. If House and Senate Republican leaders
could agree on a transportation deal, could a
royal flush be the winner? A bipartisan leadership
deal that includes the Governor could deliver a
winning royal straight. But there are other
players, too. U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Vienna, for
example, has held out the prospect of $1.5 billion
in federal dollars over ten years for Greater
Northern Virginia’s Metro system if the
Commonwealth, Maryland and the District of
Columbia will dedicate revenue streams to Metro.
And the Washington Area Airports Authority is now
among the bidders to earmark revenues from its
Dulles Toll Road to the Metrorail extension
project through Tysons Corner in Fairfax to
Loudoun County. These are community cards on the
flop that demand at least a call by the
Commonwealth.
Incidentally,
it is not a rare occurrence in Hold’em for the
five community cards to make up the best hand. All
participants who stay in the game win in that
case. An “all win” outcome is at the top of
the list of reasons why neither the Governor nor
the House of Delegates nor Virginia Senate should
fold their hands this year.
Transportation
needs and public expectations, in fact, demand a
raise and might even encourage elected officials
for once to go all in.
--
January 30, 2006
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