Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling sees no need for a broad-based tax increase this year, for transportation or anything else. He believes that making VDOT more efficient and aligning transportation with land use planning will do wonders for Virginia’s ailing road system.
“We just need to exercise some fiscal discipline,” he told a dozen or more bloggers in a conference call arranged by Norm Leahy of One Man’s Trash fame, with technical assistance from the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. “When we’ve got economic growth sufficient to support a 19 percent increase in spending, it’s unfathomable that folks are calling for a tax increase.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Bolling also believes the way out of the General Assembly’s budget gridlock is to set aside contentious transportation-tax issues for the moment and “agree on those areas where agreement can be reached.”
The differences between the House and Senate on the budget are “very small” in every area but transportation, Bolling said. “The differences between the Senate budget and the House budget are … very easily resolved. … Let’s not hold other sections of the budget hostage.”
Tax-hike hardliners in the Senate expect the budget gridlock, which could lead to a government shut down if unresolved by the end of the fiscal year, to panic members of the House into making concessions. Their calculation, the Lt. Governor said, is that “the closer you get to the deadline, members of the House will start peeling off in their opposition to higher taxes.” That won’t happen, he added. “In fact, I see the opposite of that happening.” Based on his conversations with individual senators, he thinks the Senate could accept his preference to set the transportation issue aside for later.
Buttressing that line of argument, Bolling noted, is the fact that the House and Senate aren’t as far apart on the transportation issue as commonly portrayed. Both parties would funnel General Fund budget surpluses to transportation, increase taxes on automobile insurance premiums, and bump up motorist “abuser” fees. “Rather than play brinksmanship with the rest of the budget, let’s agree upon what we can agree upon.”
In the wide-ranging blog conference, Bolling commented on a number of hot issues, from illegal immigration to educational vouchers. Read the take of these other bloggers: Elephant Ears, Too Conservative, Kilo, Nova Townhall, CatHouse Chat, Virginia Virtucon, Spank That Donkey, From On High.
