Two of the more notable proposals that General Assembly Republicans have advanced during this year’s transportation special session involve constitutional lockboxes and tolling franchises.
The Rs have backed a constitutional lockbox for regional transportation levies to ensure that state politicians can’t raid regional piggybanks. At the same time, a number of prominent Rs have floated the idea of selling toll franchises to the private sector as a way of raising up-front capital to pay for other transportation priorities. (See “One Good Idea, One Bad.”)
Can anyone see the inconsistency between those two positions? Both represent an unwarranted transfer of wealth from tax/toll payers to a different set of beneficiaries.
The reason a lockbox is needed for regional transportation levies is that politicians can’t be trusted not to divert the funds to some other use. Why would such diversions be bad? Because they would constitute a transfer of wealth from those who pay the levies to some other beneficiary who doesn’t pay the taxes. The Rs are rightfully distressed that the Ds who control the state Senate shot this idea down.
But… How’s the pilfering of regional levies any different from selling a tolling franchise to a private-sector operator who slaps tolls on a road that didn’t have them before? Under such an arrangement, the state would pick the pockets of those who pay the tolls and redistribute the funds to benefit someone who wasn’t paying the levy. A lot of Rs seem to understand the principle at stake when it comes to swiping Dulles Toll Road revenues to support the Rail-to-Dulles rail project. But their objections seem to disappear when they think that they may be the ones redistributing the funds.
Bottom line: If levies warrant a constitutional lockbox, which they do, so do bridge and highway tolls? Anything else is legalized theft. Let’s have a little consistency, please.
