Bacon's Rebellion

Should local governments take on more responsibility for building and maintaining secondary roads? That’s the debate now emerging from the GOP transportation plan — and it’s precisely the debate we should be having, although it would be helpful to re-frame the controversy in more constructive terms than the blame mongering we hear now.

Key Northern Virginia leaders don’t like the GOP plan. Reports the Washington Times:

“Northern Virginia is getting [shortchanged] right now,” said Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart, a Republican. “It produces 40 percent of revenue and receives only 17 percent of highway construction funds. We need the state to step up and take care of its responsibility.”

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat, agreed. “Right now, this bill is not workable. It’s a wholesale transfer of responsibility from the state to the localities. That is how they get around not raising taxes.”

Stewart and Connolly raise legitimate issues: If the state transfers responsibility for building and maintaining secondary roads, it also should transfer sufficient resources to do the job.

But let’s step back and ask the bigger question: Which level of government is the most appropriate for administering the construction and maintenance of local roads — local government or state government? The answer is self-evident: Local government should take responsibility for local roads. That’s the way it works in the vast majority of states, that’s the way it works with Virginia cities, and that’s the way it works in two Virginia counties: Arlington and Henrico.

It’s called aligning transportation and land use planning. The reason that urbanizing counties should take over local roads is that they are responsible already for land use decisions, zoning codes and subdivision approvals, all of which affect the location and intensity of traffic. Local officials also have a better feel for their county’s priorities than VDOT officials in a district office somewhere.

The current separate of transportation and land use is dysfunctional. Local boards of supervisors approve “pod” subdivisions that funnel traffic onto collector roads — and expect VDOT to address the resulting congestion. They approve big-lot subdivisions that require more lane-miles of roadway to serve — and expect VDOT to pick up the tab for maintenance. They mandate low density development that makes bus service uneconomical. They forbid the development of mixed-used, pedestrian-friendly communities that reduce the length and frequency of car trips. They limit development around rail stations that could take rush-hour automobiles off the road. And then they criticize “the state” for failing to pony up the funds to rescue them from the consequences of their decisions. Such irresponsibility simply has to end.

Once the fundamental decision has been made to align transportation and land use at the level of local government, a number of secondary decisions need to be made. What state resources should be transferred to local governments in compensation for taking over the job? If extra funds are needed, what revenue sources should be tapped?

Those questions are not being asked yet. Right now, the debate has taken an unproductive tone. (It’s hard to tell whether the truculence of local government officials is to blame, or where drama-seeking reporters are cherry picking the most belligerent quotes and overlooking the more thoughtful statements.) From what I’ve read, the main concern of local government officials is not seeking the optimal governance structure but avoiding getting blamed for raising taxes to fund the road improvements they want. It’s so much easier blaming the state.

Despite the deficiencies of the debate so far, it represents a departure from the Mainstream Media meta-narrative that defines the transportation debate as a purely state-level fiscal matter. Finally, the dysfunctional nature of Virginia’s governance system is coming to light.

In his column “Raw Fisher,” Marc Fisher of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Del. Morgan Griffith “let down his hair while talking to the local chamber of commerce: The Republican legislator told the local crowd that the whole purpose of this transportation package is to make sure that rural roads get built and rural interests are protected before those urban folks up in northern Virginia take over the legislature and the state, which is a demographic inevitability.”

This should explain why the Republicans decided to change course and let NOVA and Hampton Roads tax themselves in order to build their own roads. This way the pressure is diverted and the legislators downstate don’t have to worry about taking funds from rural roads. What a compromise, eh?

Fisher continues: “What the Republicans in Richmond are publicly billing as a helping hand for northern Virginia is really a last-ditch attempt to maintain the power and money-allocating sway of rural areas that they know they’ll eventually lose to the D.C. and Hampton Roads regions.”

The column referenced in Fisher’s account comes from the Martinsville Bulletin, “Road Plan Debate Revs Up.”

Who would have thought that the legislators from rural Virginia have roped all the NOVA legislators to do their dirty laundry? While NOVA representatives, like Delegates Albo, Rust and Hugo have been touting the Transportation Compromise as solution for NOVA’s transportation gridlock, they are actually promoting the interests of rural districts.

The legislators representing rural Virginia must be having quite a laugh!

The Times-Dispatch op-ed section has been doing a better job in the past year of highlighting issues in its own back yard than in any of the 20 years I’ve been reading it. The emphasis on state/local issues was evident Sunday with the publication of four columns on the transportation debate. Columns were written by Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer, House Speaker William J. Howell, Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, and Del. Brian Moran, D-Alexandria.

Most of the commentary was familiar to anyone who has been following the transportation debate closely, but Homer’s commentary was perhaps the most “newsworthy.” The metaphorical ball is in Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s court now, and Homer has done the best job that I have seen of articulating the governor’s current thoughts at a level of detail that transcends sound bites and newspaper quotes.

According to Homer, the governor sees three major flaws in the GOP transportation bill, two of which are debatable, but one of which seems indisputable.

First, the bill diverts revenue from the General Fund to transportation, taking money from school children and “our aging parents and grandparents.” Translation: The Governor doesn’t want to put any brakes on the full-throttle expansion of government spending in Virginia, and he’s willing to raise taxes to keep it growing. Sorry, I’m not convinced.

Second, the bill doesn’t provide relief now. Writes Homer regarding the GOP proposal to issue bonds as part of the funding package: “The promise of $2.5 billion in badly needed funds for highway, rail, and transit improvements will not happen until late in 2008, if ever. Virginians who are stuck in traffic or seeking a better quality of life need and deserve relief now.” That’s a semi-legitimate point. What Homer doesn’t acknowledge is that dumping more money into road and transit projects in the absence of land use reform will make congestion relief ephemeral at best.

But Homer is dead on about a third point:

The bill assumes that 21 local governments in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads will enact 16 regional taxes and fees on everything from commercial real-estate and home sales to auto repairs and gasoline.

Local officials in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads have said they won’t enact the bill as it stands now. If the bill does not work for these communities, these transportation revenues simply will not be available to Hampton Roads or Northern Virginia.

But Homer hints that Gov. Kaine is not dogmatic. Kaine clearly hopes to amend the bill to fix what he regards as its flaws. What we don’t know yet is which of the flaws the Governor is willing to live with and which ones he will go to the mats to change.

Agree or disagree with the details of the GOP transportation plan, it’s pretty clear that House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, has emerged as a political power in Virginia. Outmaneuvered over taxes by Gov. Mark R. Warner in 2004, and stymied over transportation by Senate Finance Chair John Chichester, R-Northumberland, in 2006, Howell has come tantalizingly close this year to winning the big one.

Howell was the man, with critical assistance from Attorney General Bob McDonnell, who cobbled together the plan despite a huge philosophical gulf between Republicans in the Senate and the House of Delegates. Laying his personal prestige on the line, he went so far as to testify for HB 3202 before the Senate — something that a House Speaker rarely does — and he’s held the fragile Republican coalition together in the face of withering attack.

As the taxes-and-transportation drama has unfolded over the past three years, I’ve observed, Howell has “matured” as a leader. It seems I’m not alone in that view. Tim Craig makes much the same point in a respectful profile in the Washington Post today. Among the quotes:

“He clearly had his hands on the controls and produced, so he has renewed clout and stature,” said Charlie Davis, who has been a statehouse lobbyist for nearly three decades. …

Even Democrats, who are hoping to pick up seats this fall, say Howell scored a big personal victory. “If you are looking at it strictly from a political maneuvering and political success, yeah, he gets credit,” said House Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong (D-Henry).

Virginia bloggers are familiar with Saun Kenney, the long-time political blogger who became communications director for the Republican Party of Virginia. The RPV as an institution (as opposed to elected officials) had never made much effort to reach out to the blogging community, but that’s changing.

Writes Jeff Schapiro in his update on the transportation saga in today’s Times-Dispatch: “[Kenney] said Republicans also want to ‘keep the conversation going’ on transportation through bloggers. Kenney circulates to reporters the Web addresses of blogs carrying musings on the road-and-rail fight.”

If Kenney has any sense, which he does, http://www.baconsrebellion.blogspot.com is not one of the URLs he’s passing around. None of the contributors to this blog, or the people commenting in it, have taken kindly to the Republican transportation plan. Whether we’re on the list or not, it’s good for MSM reporters to see what the blogs are saying. The commentary on the better blogs is a lot meatier than the 30-second campaign commercial the PRV has been running.

Anything that Kenney can do to “keep the conversation” going is a positive, too, if it helps disrupt the MSM meta-narrative of the transportation debate as purely a tax-and-spend issue. Try as they might, the Republicans have had a dilly of a time shifting the conversation to the positive elements of the GOP transportation package (and, yes, there are positive elements). My teeth nearly dropped out of my head when I saw that Schapiro actually acknowledged other aspects of the debate with an entire sentence in his story:

Kenney said the proposal includes features about which Kaine has spoken favorably. Among them: controls on land use and greater accountability from the state road bureaucracy.

If the Republicans read Bacon’s Rebellion, they’ll grasp very quickly that there is widespread skepticism that the billions of dollars their plan would raise would be spent wisely. If the GOPpers want to win the tug of war with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine over the transportation debate, they need to pound away at the reform and accountability features of their bill, which have gone largely overlooked in the press coverage so far.

In “Funding Formula Irks Steward,” the Potomac News reports that Corey Steward, the Chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, plans to challenge in Federal Court the state’s transportation funding formula. Steward contents that the arbitrary formula used by the state violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment.

He said for years the county’s board of supervisors has tried to convince the governor’s office and the leaders of the General Assembly to change the transportation funding formula. The lawsuit is a last ditch effort to bring some attention to the basic inequities behind the state’s funding approach, which results having the areas generating the highest tax revenues for the state turn into choke-points because of gridlocked roads.

Courtesy of Jeff Schapiro, in today’s Richmond Times Dispatch:

On Page 104 of the Republican transportation bill, there’s a reference to a section of state law that doesn’t exist.

This is no small screwup. The bungled language designates for roads an uncertain source of cash: $57 million to $108 million from stiff fines on lousy drivers.

Because of the blunder, the money goes into a black hole.

More of the blunders with the Transportation Compromise bill (AKA Bill Howell’s Tax Increase) have been documented in this blog previously. For example:

1. The Single Object Rule
2. Another Reason to Worry About the GA Transportation Plan
3. Building Roads With Regressive Taxes
4. The Equal Protection Clause

Given the many legal and constitutional questions surrounding this bill, one can’t help but wonder: Can’t our representatives in the General Assembly get anything done right?

Makes one wonder how many other bills get enacted into law with similar problems and legal questions that aren’t known or reported because they’re not receiving enough attention?

The current edition of CQ Weekly highlights the Bush administration’s flirtation with a mileage fee as a substitute for gasoline taxes. It is not yet official policy to seek a shift in the funding source for federal highway programs, but the administration is underwriting experiments in Oregon to test the feasibility of technology to administer such a tax. (See my recent column, “The Oregon Solution” for context.)

A chip installed in a car would track the number of miles the car is driving; a one-way signal would turn off the chip when the car left Oregon. Every time the car refueled, the chip would calculate the mileage and transmit it to the pump. The tax would be charged based on the number of miles driven.

Writer Kathleen Hunter quotes Janet Kavinoky, a transportation lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has backed efforts to revise the gas tax: “A gas tax is a proxy. You have different vehicles on the road with different levels of fuel efficiency. Regardless of their fuel efficiency, they are still using the road.”

That’s always been my logic: Motorists should be taxed to fund road maintenance based upon how much wear and tear they put on the roads. I’m surprised that the Virginia Chamber of Commerce hasn’t adopted the mileage-tax idea for the Old Dominion, just as I’m surprised that Virginia Republicans have failed — in spectacular fashion with the Transportation Abomination called HB 3202 — to embrace the user-pays ideas of the Bush administration.

Hunter surfaces one objection to the mileage tax that I find semi-persuasive. By taxing people on the basis of miles driven rather gasoline consumed, the mileage tax would reduce the incentive for people to shift to more fuel-efficient cars – a goal of both environmentalists and those who advocate energy independence.

That is a legitimate point, but I would respond as follows: Shifting to a mileage tax is one step among many that would make human settlement patterns more transportation efficient. In the long run, it will take a combination of both gasoline-stringy automobiles and more efficient human settlement patterns to reduce energy consumption to a more sustainable level.

The Equal Protection Clause, of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that “no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States’ professed commitment to the proposition that “all men are created equal” by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states.

A fundamental principle behind this clause is that when two people are accused of having committed the same offense, they should receive equal punishment, all other circumstances being similar. Another way to say this is that the punishment for the same offense shouldn’t differ based socio-economic class, residence, gender, race, etc.

The Traffic Abusers provision of HB 3202, calls for drivers convicted of misdemeanors to pay the customary fines, plus some outrageous civil penalties in excess of $1,000 that will be collected over a three year period. Furthermore, drivers with more than eight demerit points on their driving record will be subjected to additional civil penalties that will be collected annually.

If HB 3202 is enacted into law, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will be responsible for issuing notices and collecting the surcharged civil penalties. However, HB 3202 is silent as to how these penalties will be collected from drivers that commit traffic infractions in Virginia but who are licensed in another state.

The Virginia DMV has no authority over drivers from other states. The courts will be able to collect the traffic fine and perhaps the civil penalty due for the first year, but will be unable to collect the civil penalties in succeeding years, unless the offender pays them voluntarily.

Additionally, the fact that the DMV will have no access to the out-of-state driver’s history, they will be unable to assess or collect the additional penalties called for under HB 3202 from out-of-state drivers that have more than eight demerit points on their records.

These disparate treatments of out-of-state vs. in-state drivers place the traffic abuser provisions called for under HB 3202 on a collision course with the equal protection clause. If this bill gets enacted, any Virginia driver facing these civil penalties could and should challenge them in federal court.