Norman
Leahy’s criticism of A Conservative
Transportation Alternative (See "You
Call This Conservative?")
illustrates why conservatives have squandered one
political opportunity after another. Until
they demonstrate an ability
to work out their differences in order to develop a
constructive agenda, conservatives will continue to sit on
the political sidelines.
After
the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the regional
taxes authorized by the 2007 transportation
legislation, HB 3202, were invalid because they were
imposed by unelected authorities, Mr. Leahy and his
organization, the Virginia Institute for Public
Policy, were invited to participate in developing a
conservative proposal on transportation. Both
declined the invitation. A
Conservative Transportation Alternative was
the product of that meeting.
The
Leahy attack is noteworthy for its unsupported and
often internally contradictory contentions and
repeated mischaracterizations of the document. It is important to emphasize what A
Conservative Transportation Alternative does not
propose. It does not propose more government, as Mr.
Leahy asserts. It does not recommend giving
local governments any greater zoning authority than
they already exercise.
The
report is not an attack on development, population
growth or prosperity. Rather it is a set of
principles to guide Virginia transportation policy,
based on the principle that development should pay
for itself rather than shift financial burdens to
the taxpaying public.
The
Conservative Transportation Alternative advocates more
private involvement and risk-taking in
transportation, not more government taxation and
regulation. It advocates greater local control over
transportation functions that need not be
concentrated in a state agency, the Virginia
Department of Transportation. Putting governmental
decision-making as close to the people as possible
-- in the hands of local elected officials -- is a
conservative principle.
The
paper advocates aligning land use planning and
transportation planning, the lack of which has
frustrated political accountability in most of
Virginia's fast-growth counties. The document simply proposes that the elected
governing officials who decide where development
will occur also should be responsible for building
and maintaining the roads
that serve the development.
In
no way does the report suggest that individuals,
families and businesses should be denied the right
to choose where to live and work. Rather, it argues
that such choices should not be subsidized, as they
are now, by the taxpaying public.
Mr.
Leahy insists that developers be allowed to locate
subdivisions far from existing development and
require construction of roads to serve those
subdivisions at taxpayer expense. The related
questions of who should be responsible for secondary
roads and who will pay for them have not been
adequately addressed in Virginia. A Conservative
Transportation Alternative confronts those
issues head on. Mr. Leahy is content to leave the
problem as it is.
The
Commonwealth should be moving toward a system in
which state taxpayers in Lee County will not be
taxed to pay for roads in Fairfax County, and vice
versa. Most of the thousands of miles of secondary
roads added to the state highway system since 1986
are internal subdivision roads and collector roads
to serve those subdivisions. It’s time to examine
alternative ways to fund the maintenance of all
secondary roads, as well as the construction and
maintenance of new secondary roads outside of
subdivisions.
Decentralizing
governmental decisions affecting transportation
would serve the interest of political accountability. It
also would reflect the reality that transportation
problems differ from one locality to
another. If the method of funding secondary roads
were to approximate the operation of the free
market, we could more readily optimize our transportation
system from an economic perspective.
Ideally,
all roads and other infrastructure would be the
responsibility of the private sector and subject to
market discipline. Telephone, cable, satellite
television, radio transmission, gas and electricity
are generally provided by private entities. Why
shouldn’t transportation be provided in the same
manner? Over time, that may happen. In the meantime,
it would appear reasonable to develop a methodology
for funding roads and other transportation
facilities that is as close as possible to the
operation of the free market. That’s what the
report advocates.
Mr. Leahy and the group that published A
Conservative Transportation Alternative agree on
the proposition that people should be able to live
where they choose. But we part ways on the issue
of whether people bear the fiscal consequences of exercising
that choice. In effect, Mr. Leahy that
taxpayers should continue to subsidize those who
live in scattered, often remote, locations that are
inefficiently served by existing infrastructure. That view
is hardly a conservative one.
As
the media release that accompanied A Conservative
Transportation Alternative stated, people, not government,
should choose what kind of
transportation system they will have and are willing
to pay for. One problem in our current approach to
funding transportation is that the people are
ignorant of the real cost of the system and its
inherent subsidies. Funding through taxes has the
effect of hiding costs and subsidies. It puts government
officials in charge with the result that too many
roads get built on the basis of political
considerations.
By
contrast, roads funded with bonds paid by tolls
won’t ever materialize until private bond buyers
are convinced that a sufficient number of travelers
will use those roads. Even after a toll-funded road
is constructed, individuals can still choose to use
it or not. No one will be taxed to pay for the road.
User charges reflecting the cost
of construction, operation, maintenance and debt
service of a highway project allow people to
incorporate those costs when they
decide where to live, where to locate businesses and
when, whether and how to travel. That isn’t true
for tax-funded highways.
In
a revealing passage, Mr. Leahy says that “[t]olls
can only be economically justified if there is
sufficient traffic to generate enough money to
maintain the road.” The real problem is not paying
for maintenance (although VDOT neglected to
anticipate future maintenance costs until just a few
years ago); the problem is paying for construction
and land acquisition. Project financing through
bonds to be paid with user charges establishes a
needed discipline that reliance on tax revenues to
construct “free roads” cannot. If the users are
unwilling to pay the actual cost, or if not enough
travelers choose to use the toll road, why should
the taxpayers subsidize the facility?
The
Leahy commentary lists numerous reasons why tolls
won’t solve our transportation problems, but he offers no alternative solution.
Mr. Leahy worries that toll
revenues will be diverted to transit projects, as
the Kaine Administration has done by allowing the
use of Dulles Toll Road revenues to construct the
Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. Mr. Leahy and his
colleagues could have joined the litigation to
prevent that diversion, but chose instead to sit out
that controversy.
Mr.
Leahy can’t seem to decide whether sprawl is a
good thing or not. He blithely and mistakenly
asserts that sprawl is caused by two factors and two
factors only – a growing population and rising
prosperity. This ignores the substantial body of
literature clearly pointing to other factors such as
competition among localities for tax base; the
negative impact of Virginia’s annexation laws; the
politicization of the zoning process by those who
oppose new development in their neighborhoods (i.e.,
the NIMBY factor); the location of major projects
such as airports, reservoirs and interstate
highways; the attraction of lower real estate costs
coupled with government subsidies for infrastructure
and rural development; and flight from perceived
problems in central cities. After implicitly arguing
that sprawl is desirable, he mistakenly contends
that the proposals in A Conservative
Transportation Alternative would make problems
that accompany sprawl even worse.
Obviously,
Mr. Leahy confuses Adequate Public Facilities
Ordinances, which the report does not advocate, with
the merger of land use planning and transportation
planning at the local level. He also ignores the
decades of experience in Henrico county where land
use planning and transportation planning has been
effectively handled by the local governing body.
Such coordination has not contributed to sprawl in surrounding
counties -- but the location of Route 288 (an
interstate-design highway west of Henrico County)
and competition by Henrico’s neighboring counties
for commercial and industrial enterprises most
certainly have.
The
signatories of A Conservative Transportation
Authority invite a debate over their conclusions
and recommendations, but it should be an honest
debate based on what the report actually says.
--
April 21, 2008
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