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At
the onset of the 2007 General Assembly session, I
was optimistic that the legislature would make at
least incremental progress toward the far-reaching
reforms needed to address Virginia's transportation
woes. Adopting an air of weary cynicism at the time
would have saved me a lot of grief. Our governance
system has proven itself dysfunctional beyond my
worst nightmares.
Democrats
are blaming Republicans for the impasse, and
Republicans are blaming Democrats. Sadly, there is
probably truth to the accusations of both. Terrified
of retribution in the fall elections, Republicans
cobbled together an atrocious "compromise"
package of legislation. Determined to deprive the
GOP of a victory, the Dems have sabotaged efforts to
enact this package while offering nothing to replace
it but the same unworkable proposals that failed to
pass last year.
Then
there are the renegade RINOs, the "Republicans
in Name Only," who muddy the waters by siding
with the Dems. The ever-unhelpful press corps
characterizes these RINOs, including, most famously,
Senate Finance Chair John H. Chichester,
R-Northumberland, as "moderates," even
though they have advocated tax increases so extreme
that even Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and his
predecessor Mark R. Warner have never embraced them.
If
you want to understand what's going on, you need to
strip away party labels. Then you need to apply two
levels of analysis.
On
the first level of analysis, Virginia's transportation
train wreck pits the party of "big government" (or as
I fondly call it, "the Axis of Taxes"), which includes most Democrats plus
a number of Republicans, versus the party of
"small government," which consists mainly
of Republicans, most of whom serve in the House of
Delegates. The Axis of Taxes contends that
Virginia needs a stable, long-term source of
revenue to pay for road improvements.
Insisting that the funds should not come from
the General Fund, where it would interfere with the
break-neck expansion of education, health care and
other programs, this coalition has pressed
relentlessly for higher taxes. The Small
Government faction argues that it is unconscionable
to raise taxes while the General Fund is running
chronic budget surpluses, especially after the
statewide tax hikes in 2004 and the run-up in local
property taxes across most of Virginia.
That
much is reasonably straight-forward. It's the
narrative that the press corps has imposed upon the
transportation debate, and it offers a familiar
framework that the public can understand.
The
Big Government/Small Government divide is very real,
but it explains only part of what is going on. At a
deeper level of analysis, the transportation train
wreck also pits the forces of "Business As
Usual" against the advocates of reform. The two
polarities sometimes overlap, but not always.
Business
As Usual consists of the vested interests who want
to maintain the status quo, the current
configuration of institutional power. The spokesmen
for Business As Usual contend that transportation in
Virginia has reached a "crisis" stage, and
that the crisis has fiscal origins. The solution to
traffic congestion is to increase the capacity of
the transportation system: to build more lane-miles
of roadway and, where appropriate, to expand mass
transit capabilities. The main constraint is
insufficient funds. The main solution is higher
taxes.
The
reformers counter that, however well Virginia's
system for building and maintaining roads and rail
worked when devised in the 1930s, it does not work
well now. Human settlement patterns in Virginia have
evolved from an "urban" form of
development marked by mixed uses, higher densities,
grid streets and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes,
into an auto-centric "suburban" motif of
separated land uses, lower densities, pod
development, and a cul de sac/collector/arterial
road network. The suburban pattern forces people
into their cars to accomplish their daily
tasks.
Not
only has population increased over the past
generation, but as the Old Dominion has evolved into
an auto-focused society depriving people of other
transportation options, the
number of licensed drivers has soared, too: In 1970,
licensed drivers constituted 52.6 percent of the state's
population; by 2005, they had increased to 70.1
percent. In other words, in one generation, Virginia
has gone from five out of 10 people driving cars to
seven out of 10. That single change puts 40 percent
more drivers on the roads.
Not
only are there more drivers, Virginians take more
frequent trips and longer trips than they used to.
According to DMV numbers, average vehicle miles
traveled per
licensed driver has increased from 11,600 miles
per year in 1970 to 15,000 miles in 2005 -- and that
doesn't take into account the introduction in 2002
of a new methodology for calculating miles traveled
that lowered the numbers.
At
some point, the cost of providing unlimited mobility
becomes unsustainable. The vTrans2025 study reflects
the best thinking of the Virginia Department of
Transportation the last time it calculated what it
would cost to build enough road and rail capacity to
"build our way out of traffic congestion."
Looking ahead 20 years, this Warner administration
document estimated that Virginia faced a funding gap
of $108 billion -- an average of $5.4 billion a
year. Virginia politics are gridlocked over
increasing taxes by $1 billion a year. Except
perhaps in Sen. Chichester's office, there is no
appetite anywhere in Virginia for raising taxes by
$5.4 billion a year.
The
funding gap has actually worsened since VTrans 2025,
as VDOT has gotten a better handle on its long-term
maintenance costs and as rising raw material prices
have driven up the cost of building and maintaining
roads, rails and bridges. Rather than adopt new
strategies for providing mobility, however, the
forces of Business As Usual are determined to
perpetuate the ancien
regime upon which they feed. The rising price
of asphalt, concrete and steel becomes not a reason
to devise transportation systems that use less of
those materials but a justification for raising
taxes to continue doing things the same way they
always have been done.
By
contrast, reformers argue that higher taxes will
only paper over the growing cracks in Virginia's
transportation system. Even if new legislation pumps
an extra $1 billion a year into the system -- far
short of what it takes for us to "build our way
out of congestion" -- they predict that failure
to address the underlying flaws will result in
traffic congestion's continuing to get worse.
The
reformers have had a difficult time getting their
message across. First, the problems they describe --
dysfunctional land use practices, outmoded
governmental institutions, counterproductive
fund-raising mechanisms -- are complex. Second,
Virginia's drive-by media has uncritically adopted
the meta-narrative of Business As Usual, so the
public is given no other framework for interpreting
the debate. Third, the reformers themselves are not
a unified force.
The
reformers fall into two broad camps: the
conservationists and the conservatives.
Conservationists and environmentalists rally under
the banner of "smart growth." Tilting
strongly toward the Democratic Party, they have a
strong grass roots network and have achieved a small
measure of influence in the office of Gov. Timothy
M. Kaine. The Smart Growth policy mix leans toward
more government intervention, not less. In the
estimation of smart growthers, the problem is that
local government has insufficient power at its
disposal to prevent developers from building where
roads are inadequate to serve them. Their solutions
include equipping localities with Adequate Public
Facilities ordinances and greater legal authority to
halt zoning where transportation facilities are
inadequate. Smart Growthers tend to regard the
"property rights" movement as an obstacle.
And not without reason: Developers have used
property rights arguments in the courts to stymie
growth-management initiatives.
The
other group of reformers tends to regard government
as the problem, not the solution. The conservatives
are less than enthralled with proposed Smart Growth
remedies. Leaning Republican, the free
markets/property rights crowd tends to regard Smart
Growth as a euphemism for social engineering: In
their view, leftist tree huggers would compel them
to exchange their big lots and single-family
dwellings for townhouses, and trade in their SUVs
for seats on a bus. Similarly, conservatives regard
property rights as a protection against the
leviathan state.
So,
although both oppose Business As Usual, as
manifested in their resentment of the special
interests that dominate the political process, the
Smart Growthers and the free marketeers regard each
other with suspicion. Differences in policy
priorities are often magnified by differences in
political rhetoric: The Smart Growth group tends to
embrace more "liberal" causes and cultural
values, while the free marketeers tend to be more
conservative. Although some informal communications
take place between the two camps, the foes of
Business As Usual have developed no formal
mechanisms for identifying common ground, much less
for coordinating their efforts on the legislative
front.
That
is the background against which the transportation
debate has taken place. The story of the 2007
session began with the special transportation
session last September when the Small Government
wing of the House of Delegates held steadfastly
against higher taxes. That group, clustered around
the leadership of House Speaker William J. Howell,
R-Stafford, recognized, however, that "Just Say
No to Taxes" did not constitute a compelling
philosophy for governing. Howell and his allies
began to develop the argument that greater spending
had to be accompanied by reform in how that money
was spent.
That
line of thinking saw light in a package of proposals
submitted during the September special session that
would change the way the state built and maintained
its roads. The bills would accomplish a number of
things: They would create new tools for fast-growth
counties to concentrate growth in urban management
areas, and they would allow the transfer of
responsibility for local roads from VDOT to local
governments. Additionally, the House envisioned an
overhaul of the way VDOT did business through
privatization, outsourcing, public-private
partnerships and putting into place performance
measures.
The
plan had the virtue of dealing with underlying
causes of traffic congestion -- it would have
aligned transportation with land use planning in
fast-growth counties -- something that Small
Government faction had never contemplated before.
But it had major limitations. It didn't give
fast-growth counties the kinds of powers they
wanted, nor did it bequeath them the powers that the
Smart Growth community thought they should have.
Further, the House bills did nothing to stimulate
in-fill development and redevelopment in central
cities and aging suburbs where roads and other
infrastructure already exist. The Smart Growthers
never bought into the House solution.
More
critically, the House plan had nothing to offer
their fellow Republicans in the state Senate who, to
varying degrees, belong to the Big Government
faction. A working majority of Republican senators
was convinced that the only meaningful solution to
the transportation crisis was raising taxes.
Some
time between September and January, however, House
and Senate Republicans became more inclined to
compromise. The surprise election of Jim Webb over
incumbent Sen. George Allen sparked triumphal talk
among Democrats that Republicans were vulnerable in
Washington's Northern Virginia suburbs. Gov. Kaine
threw down the gauntlet, threatening to make the
do-nothing record of the GOP a campaign issue.
Regardless of how Northern Virginians voted in 2002
(they defeated a plan to raise taxes to fund local
transportation projects) and whatever the polls
might say (large majorities of Virginia voters
opposed higher taxes to pay for transportation),
Republicans panicked at the prospect of losing
control of one or more chambers in the fall 2007
elections.
Concluding
that they could not afford to be portrayed as
obstrucionists on transportation, the Big Government
and Small Government wings of the Republican Party
came together for mutual survival. They fashioned a
grand compromise that was pleasing to none but
grudgingly acceptable to most. The chief virtue of
the compromise was that it would allow Republicans
to proclaim that they had taken bold and decisive
action.
The
Axis-of-Taxes wing could take comfort from the fact
that, if the two regions went along, the plan would
jack up transportation spending by roughly $1
billion a year. Yet by issuing debt, spending
General Fund surpluses, raising obscure statewide
taxes and giving Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads
the option to raise regional taxes, it also allowed
the Small Government faction to claim that it
avoided a "statewide general tax
increase." The compromise also recycled the
VDOT/land use reforms that the Small Government
faction felt would make the system work more
efficiently.
For
a time, it appeared that the Compromise GOP package
had a shot at succeeding. The bills won over GOP
senators who had fought the House the previous year.
If the GOP could maintain solidarity in the Senate,
they would carry the day, presenting Gov. Kaine with
the choice of signing the legislation or vetoing it
and killing the state's best chance at resolving the
transportation issue.
But
neither scenario unfolded. Sen. Chichester and a
handful of Republicans committed to Big Government
aligned themselves with Senate Democrats to block
the GOP compromise. Chichester's hostility came as
no surprise: The veteran legislator had always
made clear his opposition to any funding scheme that
would use General Fund monies to fund
transportation. Kaine and the senate Democrats went
along. As Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, bluntly made
their case: "A reasonable plan does not take
money from public education, higher education,
health care and public safety. Especially, it
doesn't take money from our sick and our disabled
neighbors."
It
was an audacious gambit for the Big Government
party. Virginia's current biennial budget provides
19 percent more for K-12 education, 22 percent for
higher education, 15 percent for public safety, 21
percent for mental health, and 38 percent for the
Chesapeake Bay than the two-year previous budget.
The GOP compromise would not have cut spending in
any of those categories -- it would have used
surplus revenue only. But the Mainstream Media
dutifully repeated the Big Government rhetoric
without ever putting it in context of the actual
facts. Comments such as Howell's were treated
seriously, not greeted with the guffaws they
warranted.
Now
the transportation legislation is in the hands of
Senate and House conferees, whose job is to
reconcile competing versions of the way forward for
transportation. Their challenge
is to thread the needle between the GOP Big
Government ultras in the Senate, who have shown zero
willingness to compromise, the Dems, who want to see
the Republicans fail, and the Small Government
partisans in the House who have already compromised
once and feel little inclined to make a second round
of concessions.
Will
the conferees pull off a legislative miracle,
producing enough loaves and fishes to satisfy
everyone and win passage? I don't know, and I'm past
the point of caring. Some specific measures in the
package -- VDOT/land use reforms, in particular --
could nudge Virginia in the direction of meaningful
reform. But they would be insufficient by themselves
to address root causes of traffic congestion, while
the financing mechanisms that are bundled with them
would be downright disastrous.
This
Transportation Abomination, whatever its final form,
would sever any connection between those who benefit
from transportation improvements and those who pay
for them. Through some yet-to-be-determined
combination of General Fund surpluses, General
Fund-backed debt, car registration taxes, regional
taxes, and other obscure fees and levies too
numerous to recite, transportation improvements
would be paid for overwhelmingly by taxpayers
generally and, to a lesser extent, car owners (70
percent of the population) generally.
The
effect of any such legislation would be to subsidize
the profligate, or those who drive the most, at the
expense of the virtuous: those who walk, bicycle,
telecommute, carpool, ride the bus, take the Metro,
carpool or telecommute.
Virginia cannot hope to improve mobility by subsidizing those who cause
traffic congestion at the expense of those who do not. This financing package
will only encourage people to drive more.
This principle is so stunningly self-evident that I
am at a loss for words to explain how anyone can
fail to see it.
Thus,
it is my fervent wish that this political compromise
collapses under the weight of its own
contradictions. Let Gov. Kaine take the issue to the
voters this fall, if he wants. Let the people decide
this fall whether they want to raise taxes, spend
General Fund revenues on transportation or send
their representatives back to the drawing board to
devise something better. Whatever the next
legislature comes up with can't, it can't do any
worse.
-- February
20, 2007
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