Koelemay's Kosmos

Doug Koelemay


 

Transportation Hold 'em

 

Most of the cards on the General Assembly's transportation table are lying face up. But it's still too early to know who's got the winning hand.


   

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 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact info

 

J. Douglas Koelemay

Managing Director

Qorvis Communications

8484 Westpark Drive

Suite 800

McLean, Virginia 22102

Phone: (703) 744-7800

Fax:    (703) 744-7994

Email:   dkoelemay@qorvis.com

 

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