Bacon's Rebellion

One of the most egregious provisions of the Transportation Compromise bill (AKA Bill Howell’s Tax Increase), is the provision calling for fines and penalties on abusive drivers. The thinking has been that abusive drivers cause accidents, which cause delays and thereby contribute to the transportation gridlock.

Two House Delegates from Northern Virginia, Dave Albo (R-Fairfax) and Tom Rust (R-Herndon) have been on a single-minded pursuit of enacting super penalties on abusive drivers that can be used to fund transportation. For three years now, they have been reintroducing similar versions of a bill that will raise traffic fines and penalize repeat traffic violators with additional penalties–bills that been plagued with constitutional and legal questions. (For example see “Taxing Drivers” or “Why Not A Ticket for Tax Abuse.”)

Albo and Rust started out proposing that anyone with four points on their driver’s license be required to pay up to $700 a year in additional penalties. Getting four points nowadays is easy; you can be an example driver and all it takes is one moving violation to get enough points classifying you an “abusive driver” under the Albo/Rust definition.

Based on the outcry generated about the bill’s retroactive provisions (penalties applied retroactively are illegal both under the U.S. and Virginia constitution) they had to relent and increase the outstanding points from four to eight. Furthermore, before existing points would be counted, one needed to get one additional citation after July 1, 2007.

What is missed in the discussion over the definition of “traffic abusers” or “abusive drivers” is the fact that another section of the same bill calls for levying unheard of penalties for even one minor traffic violation. For example, if a driver with a perfect record gets a moving citation he or she will face fines and penalties well exceeding $1,000–regardless of their prior driving record. The only break they get is that they’ll pay the additional penalties called for in this bill over a three year period.

In other words, you can have a perfect driving record over let’s say 20 years, but you’re still going to get saddled paying fines and penalties exceeding $1,000 for a minor moving violation–all in the name of solving our transportation gridlock. Needless to say, these sort of penalties are regressive and will have a severe impact on low and moderate income families (many of whom are minorities). How can the GOP claim that it is cares about low and moderate income families and minorities when it passes this type of legislation?

These sort of bills bolster the Democrat argument that the GOP is the party of the rich and doesn’t care about the poor or working middle-class families.

More next on equal protection–our fundamental legal principle that we’re all equal under the law…

One of the regional taxes embedded in the General Assembly’s transportation funding package is a five percent service fee on automobile repairs. I suppose the logic is that the levy can be characterized as a “user fee” on automobile owners rather than a tax, which it really is.

This tax is very worrisome. Applying a fee for services is a Rubicon that Virginia has not yet crossed. As a correspondent who works for a major state trade association points out: “We have not applied taxes to services provided in Virginia. This precedent of applying fees on a service is a dangerous one, opening the door for taxes on lawyers, accountants, or day-care.”

Everyone in the service sector of the economy — and that includes writers like myself — ought to be afraid… very afraid.

Here are the latest twists in the ongoing transportation saga: On his radio talk show, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine threatened to veto the General Assembly’s transportation bill if lawmakers reject his proposed amendments. Summarizes the Associated Press:

Kaine said he has three areas of concern to address in the 30 days he has to amend or veto legislation: Making sure the regional plans are workable and palatable to the local governments that will have to implement them; ensuring rural areas get their share of road aid and meeting an annual commitment to use general funds to service about $2.5 billion in transportation debt.

Also, read the coverage in the Virginian-Pilot and Times-Dispatch.

The Washington Post story emphasizes that local governments in Northern Virginia are not happy with the legislation, which would require them to take over responsibility for planning for and building secondary roads as a condition for raising some $400 million a year through regional taxes and fees. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution Monday calling on Kaine to veto the bill if the provision remained. Prince William and Loudoun Counties also are likely to rebel.

But the GOP transportation package is a delicate thing, which could fall apart if Kaine tries to amend it, warns Del. Clay Athey, R-Front Royal. The plan, a compromise formed by Republicans, was passed in the only form that could be approved by both the House and the Senate, he told the Winchester Star. (Story available only to registered users.)

Update: Gov. Kaine needs to get his story straight, Del. Athey tells the Northern Virginia Daily. “The governor probably ought to read the bill before he goes running around the state telling people how bad it is,” Athey told reporter Garren Shipley.

HB 3202 doesn’t force anyone to take over secondary roads, said Athey, the primary author of the bill’s land-use sections.The legislation would allow the state’s nine urban counties with populations greater than 90,000 to take over their road systems if they so choose. If they do, they’d get the money and equipment that the state has been using as well as its employees.

In some cases, counties would get more money than the Virginia Department of Transportation is spending on them now, Athey said.They’d also get the right to impose impact fees on areas outside of the Urban Transportation Districts that counties would begin to maintain.

Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall responds that Athey needs to read his own bill. Line 329 “couldn’t be more clear.” Here is the most recent version of the bill. Does anyone know which line is “line 329”?

I’m glad to be back blogging on BR! It’s a time consuming process, but I missed being away. Thank you Jim for inviting me to re-join the premier blog on VA politics.

A lot has been written about the GOP Transportation Compromise that squeaked through the State Senate on a 21 to 19 vote. Jim Bacon called it “Transportation Abomination.” I prefer referring to it as “Bill Howell’s Tax Increase,” but the discussion on taxes will have to come later.

In the meantime, I have yet to see any in-depth analysis of some of the provisions called for in this bill, particularly some legal issues that arise from this legislation and the manner in which it was packaged into one mammoth bill.

Article IV, Section 12 of the Virginia Constitution addresses the “Form of Laws.” It states:

No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title. Nor shall any law be revived or amended with reference to its title, but the act revived or the section amended shall be reenacted and published at length.

Speaker Bill Howell, the patron of HB3202, has tried to explain away this requirement by saying that its single object is “congestion mitigation.” But the Constitution requires that the one object behind the bill be expressed in its title.

The title of HB 3202 has nothing to do with congestion mitigation—it doesn’t even mention the word congestion. The bill’s title is: “Transportation funding; authority to certain localities to impose additional fees therefor [sic], report.”

So what is the single object that this bill embraces? There are so many parts to this bill one is hard pressed to summarize them all. It purports to do a little of everything, such as raising taxes, promoting an efficiency study, calling for economic development, increasing traffic fines, granting new taxing authorities to localities, and the list goes on…

I don’t mean to be presumptuous or give Gov. Kaine any ideas, but the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) is trying to make an issue if the Governor amends or vetoes the transportation compromise bill. Instead, all Gov. Kaine has to do, is return the bill back to the legislature since it fails to meet the single object rule as required by our Constitution. That will deflate the PRV’s bubble and will expose Bill Howell’s Tax Increase for what it really is—an abomination!

In any case, even if the governor does not read the BR blog, I’m certain that certain patriots are standing in the wings and plan to challenge the constitutionality of this bill in the courts. It is indeed mind-boggling, that Virginia’s law and order party consistently manages to come up with bills that are designed to evade or outright ignore basic legal and constitutional requirements.

More on additional legal issues with this bill in my next post.

In the place of offering any constructive proposals for addressing Virginia’s transportation problems, the Washington Post editorial writers insist upon playing the anti-RoVa card. Here is the lede of today’s editorial:

After all the fuss and shouting about a grand statewide transportation funding plan, here is what the legislative powers in Richmond have decided to pay for each year to relieve the beleaguered commuters of Northern Virginia: half of one highway interchange, or the equivalent thereof.

As for any further improvements to Northern Virginia’s jammed roadways, the legislature has said the region is welcome to tax itself.

Despite “Republican propaganda” of raising $1.5 billion a year to spend on roads under the legislative package it crafted, the Post opines, the state would send Northern Virginia only $54 million for new road construction a year. The bulk of the new funds for the region would come from taxes that Northern Virginia imposes on itself. Says the WaPo: Gov. Timothy M. Kaine needs to amend the bill, insisting upon a “more robust state funding component so that the burden of improving Northern Virginia’s transportation network does not fall so overwhelmingly on the region itself. “

Somehow, in the WaPo mythology, the inequitable allocation of transportation dollars is all the fault of evil Republicans. Time for a reality check: The allocation of state transportation dollars is determined by a complex formula that was last updated (as memory serves, please correct me if I’m wrong) in 1986 as part of Gov. Gerald L. Baliles’ overhaul of Virginia’s transportation funding. The legislature back then was controlled by Democrats. Baliles was (and is) a Democrat. Back in 1986, before two intervening censuses and redistrictings, the General Assembly had more rural representation than it does now. The allocation formula was designed, in large measure, to protect rural interests.

The GOP Compromise would circumvent the state transportation funding formula: The estimated $400 million raised by Northern Virginia taxpayers for a regional transportation authority would all stay in Northern Virginia. Greedy downstate leeches would get none of it.

If the Washington Post pundits could rise above its Manichean worldview that casts downstate and conservative Republicans as the source of all evil , they might realize that the GOP package is probably the best deal that NoVa can get. The only alternatives are (1) to funnel new taxes through the old transportation funding formula, in which case NoVa would get hosed, or (2) turn the distribution of funds into a wide-open pork-fest where money flows into districts whose representatives have the most political clout — in which case NoVa would get hosed.

If the WaPo editorialistas were interested in getting more money for NoVa rather than blindly flaying its partisan antagonists, they would support the GOP package. If that were too bitter a pill to swallow, they would recommend restructuring the state transportation funding formula to be more favorable to urban/suburban interests.

Of course, in the absence of Fundamental Change, dumping more money into Northern Virginia road and transit projects won’t help congestion relief. The GOP plan is gravely flawed, though not for reasons comprehensible to the Washington Post. But expecting the WaPo to achieve that level of understanding is like teaching quantum physics to an algebra drop-out. For right now, I would be grateful if the WaPo pundits would simply grasp the most basic facts of Virginia government instead of spewing nonsense.

It just seems like common sense: If you cram more offices and housing into a place, you’ll get more people, more traffic and more congestion. That’s the sentiment animinating the opposition to increased density in Tysons Corner.

But common sense isn’t always right. In an example of the kind of reporting we should see more of, the Washington Post illuminates the Tysons Corner debate in a Feb. 18 article by looking at the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor in Arlington. The surge in development along the Corridor, which is served by METRO, has produced relatively little extra automobile traffic. Skeptics respond that Tysons is different from Arlington: Increasing density, even if the METRO is built, will not have the same impact.

True, Tysons is different. It may present special challenges. That just means they the County will have to work at it — just like Arlington did. The Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor did not just emerge like Venus on the half-shell. Arlington has worked tirelessly for decades to make its METRO Corridor work. Says the Post:

It took Arlington decades, they said, to draw up plans, win support from nearby residents and then attract the kind of development they were hoping for.

Winning local support was achieved, officials said, only after countless meetings and pledges that Arlington would stick to a “bull’s-eye” approach, limiting the tallest buildings to a quarter-mile radius from rail stations and not encroaching on neighborhoods. To keep up support over time, the county instituted parking limits and traffic-calming methods on nearby streets.

Employees and residents in the corridor are encouraged to stay out of their cars through parking limits, transit subsidies, a county bus system, bike paths and pedestrian-friendly street designs. The county has the advantage of having control over the design of its secondary streets, an authority that in most Virginia counties is held by the state.

“It’s not just one policy but a whole series of things,” said Dennis Leach, the county’s transportation chief. “This is not something you do overnight. Arlington’s been at this 30 years, and not everything’s perfect. We have a lot more to do.”

There are no simple solutions. There are no painless remedies. Devising functional land use patterns and transportation systems will take unstinting effort. But the end result is a system that does work. What we have now will never work, no matter how much money we dump into it.

(Hat tip to Nova MiddleMan for bringing this article to my attention.)