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"We’ll
have some transportation budget provisions by the
March 11 adjournment," a veteran
transportation lobbyist noted last week as
Delegates and state Senators adopted separate
versions of the two-year budget that starts July
1, 2006, "We just won’t have a real
transportation plan. So what else is new?"
In
the lobbyist’s blunt view, transportation
politics will finesse the absence of a plan,
disagreements over the level of funding and other
issues. Virginia House and Senate leaders will use
the next 10 days to strike a transportation deal
and turn things over to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to
articulate a coherent strategy of some kind before
the April 19 veto session.
Such
a political deal still could acknowledge what Gov.
Kaine and state business leaders have been saying
for some time: More money is needed to meet
transportation infrastructure needs across
Virginia, particularly in fast-growing regions,
such as Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, where
traffic congestion and limited transportation
alternatives are choking economic growth. But
there is no appetite to tackle what has been sized
by some experts as a $2 billion-per-year need,
including $600 million annually each for Northern
Virginia and Hampton Roads.
Such
a political compromise also could acknowledge that
transportation needs new, sustainable sources of
funds so that at some point in the future the
Commonwealth could have a strategic transportation
plan. Gov. Kaine continues to make clear in his
transportation town hall meetings around the state
that without new sources of funds, Virginia will
be dedicating its entire road and highway budget
to maintenance in five years. There may not be
enough money left over then even to provide
matching funds for federal highway construction
dollars.
It
would be Kafka-esque for the General Assembly to
acknowledge that there are transportation
solutions... but not for all of Virginia. And that
there are substantial new transportation
dollars... just not now. Everyone appears to agree
that some one-time transportation needs could be
met by dedicating General Funds this year to
transportation. Similarly, a discrete funding
source that will grow in the future could be
dedicated anew to the transportation trust fund.
And who wouldn’t support raising some of the
fees related to vehicle registrations?
Some
general funds, some fee increases, making the
sales tax on vehicle sales a little more like the
sales tax on everything else sound like parts of a
deal that can be struck now. And if that doesn’t
accomplish everything? "We can tackle this
again in 2007," quips one Delegate.
"After all, the Assembly is like the circus:
We come back every January."
Still,
it is risky for General Assembly members to shove
more comprehensive solutions into 2007 given
elections ahead for both Delegates and state
Senators next year. Gov. Kaine is drawing
confidence in his transportation public meetings
from survey research that shows voters want a
comprehensive transportation solution and are
willing to pay higher taxes to get it. As outlined
in the Richmond Times-Dispatch recently, a
February survey shows 88 percent of Virginia
voters say money should not be diverted to
transportation from such popular services as
education, 84 percent want a long-term remedy and
77 percent believe new transportation funding
should be directed to all areas of the state.
A
transportation half-measure right now driven by
legislative politics would not only ignore these
raised public expectations, it might actually
encourage challengers in 2007 to incumbents who
don’t deliver in 2006. The survey as reported in
the RTD suggests two-thirds of all voters,
including 40 percent of Republican voters, would
be more likely to support a candidate in 2007 that
stood for substantial, sustainable, statewide
transportation solutions over one who did not.
But
in the short term, statewide solutions that demand
more total revenues compete openly with plans to
use more general fund dollars and to encourage
discrete regional solutions, such as dedicating a
new local tax in a region to transportation
solutions in that region.
"If
we don’t have to vote for a general tax
increase," one Delegate explains, "then
we don’t have to demand more transportation
dollars through existing formulas and that can let
the most congested regions do some things on their
own."
Allowing
localities in Northern Virginia to decide whether
raise the sales tax a quarter cent to fund
Metrorail operations, for example, is the kind of
local option that wouldn’t require every
Delegate or state Senator to actually vote for a
new tax. And the estimated $50 million annually
raised in that region (along with other dedicated
funds from Maryland and the District of Columbia)
are to be matched by $150 million annually in new
federal dollars.
Similarly,
transportation projects built by the private
sector with money paid back through tolls on those
projects would keep mainly local funds working on
mainly local projects. These and other questions
don’t get any easier to answer after the
Assembly’s March 11 date for scheduled
adjournment, so a special session for
transportation later might only have the purpose
of building popular pressure. But even without a
consensus on strategic plans and regardless of
pressure ahead, legislators already know they need
to approve lots more money for new highways,
roads, bridges, transit, ports, airports and rail
construction as well as maintenance.
The
special session is now.
--
February 27, 2006
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