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“Raising
taxes and 20th Century approaches are the Wrong
Way” – House of Republicans introduction
of a comprehensive 21st century transportation
plan.
Finally,
the Republican Caucus in the House of Delegates
has released its much anticipated transportation
plan. The program was long overdue, given that
both the Governor’s and Senate plans were
released several weeks ago.
The
House plan is three pronged: It proposes to manage
growth in a responsible manner; it promises to
transform how transportation services are
organized, planned, and delivered; and it invests
new, dedicated, and sustained revenue for targeted
solutions with the goal of reducing congestion and
increasing mobility—without increasing taxes.
The
proposals from Gov. Timothy M Kaine (D) and the
Senate Republicans are the typical knee-jerk
reaction of tax-and-spend politicians. Whenever
these folks perceive a public demand for
additional services, they run around dreaming up
new taxes.
In
contrast, the House Republican plan is a breath of
fresh air. It does not rely on new taxes but
promises to earmark some $2 billion over the next
four years to fund our transportation priorities.
Virginia
does not face a shortfall of revenues—on the
contrary, we are sitting on large budget
surpluses. Even before the 2004 tax increase
kicked in, the revenues to the treasury greatly
exceeded the spending outlays.
The
Virginia Club for Growth and other conservative
organizations have been saying for years now that
Virginia faces a spending crisis. We are still
using an antiquated budget that was designed in
the early 1970s, long before the advent of modern
computer networks.
Furthermore,
Virginia does very little in terms of overseeing
the spending of tax dollars. We have yet to
institute any performance-based budgeting
initiatives or implement independent oversight
controls over the way executive agencies spend and
manage their appropriated dollars.
Budget
reforms are sorely needed before our state begins
to operate like a 21st century enterprise. But our
current transportation problems cannot wait for
the politicians to first reform the budget. Budget
reforms could take years—it is highly unlikely
that they would take place while the state Senate
is run by a herd of RINOs (Republicans in Name
Only).
That
is precisely why the House plan is noteworthy. It
not only diverts existing funds to free up our
transportation bottlenecks, it tries to reform the
way we manage our traffic problems.
Bills
proposed by House Republicans attempt to instill
greater accountability and oversight over
transportation agencies, expedite the deployment
of new technologies to squeeze more capacity out
of existing roadways, provide access to
cost-effective and time-saving procurement
methods, increase public-private partnerships, and
push other similar initiatives intended to
increase efficiencies and reduce costs.
Like
any other set of proposals, the House plan
contains some ideas that should be widely debated.
For example, piling civil penalties on top of
traffic fines on habitually dangerous drivers is
one proposal that is highly questionable. It is
doubtful that a correlation exists between bad
driving and traffic fines. No one is saying that
the traffic fines are set too low or that by
increasing the fines, somehow this makes drivers
drive more responsibly. On the contrary, the House
plan relies on additional civil penalties to pay
for new roads—not to promote better driving.
Unfortunately,
the House plan relies excessively on the money to
be raised through bad drivers, as more than 25
percent of all the new funding is estimated to
come from this source. The demerits of this
proposal have been discussed before (see: “Tax
Fever,” Jan. 30, 2006, and “Why
Not a Ticket for Tax Abuse?” Jan. 4, 2005).
Furthermore,
there are two other fallacies associated with this
idea: Firstly, additional fines and penalties will
do little to promote safer driving; in other
words, if 25 percent of the gridlock is due to bad
drivers causing accidents as the House Republicans
estimate, this initiative will have no affect on
freeing up any part of the gridlock. Secondly, in
the unlikely event that the additional civil
penalties inspire drivers to begin driving more
responsibly, the additional revenues will dry up.
Nonetheless,
other House Republican proposals merit close
attention. Like all proposals they should be
debated and the best ideas should be considered
for implementation. In any event, the House
Republicans should be commended for thinking
outside the box.
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February 13, 2006
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