by James A. Bacon
Senate and House of Delegates conferees have nearly nailed down a compromise over the state budget. The main obstacle: some $700 million in additional debt to offset the costs of tolls in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Jim Noland with the Times-Dispatch has the story.
The absence of funding to pay down the tolls on the Dulles Toll Road, revenues from which are being tapped to pay for the Rail-to-Dulles project, and the Midtown-Downtown tunnels in south Hampton Roads is a deal breaker for senate Democrats. “You ain’t got 21 votes in the Senate for a budget — period,” said Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, whom Noland described as “angered.”
“I suggest you go back and find the … money,” he said. “Or tell the governor he ain’t going to have a budget.”
The Republican approach to the financing of transportation has always been incoherent: No new taxes. Period. Even if the 17.5-cent-per-gallon motor fuels tax has been severely eroded by inflation. Even if tolls, like those on the Dulles Toll Road, are extracted to pay for totally unrelated projects like heavy rail. Even if it means sucking money out of the General Fund, which has traditionally been reserved for programs that don’t have dedicated revenue streams. Republicans have totally abandoned the idea of “user pays” financing for roads and highways.
Now we know that the Democrats’ position on financing transportation is equally inconsistent and incoherent. That wasn’t so obvious this session, as Democrats did champion the idea of indexing the motor fuels tax for inflation. Anything that preserves the gas tax as a funding source is to be desired because it hews to the user pays paradigm. But this latest brouhaha suggests that the Dems aren’t any more interested in User Pays than the GOP. If they were, they wouldn’t be threatening to shut down the budget over $700 million in extra transportation subsidies — especially these subsidies.
(As an aside, I’m not sure where Nolan gets that $700 million figure. The proposals that I’ve seen would provide $450 million to the Rail-to-Dulles project, while the figure mentioned for the Norfolk-Portsmouth tunnels is more like $125 million. Regardless, the principles are the same.)
The Rail-for-Dulles funding is pure Alice in Wonderland. More than half of Phase 2 capital costs would come from toll revenues extracted from commuters on the Dulles Toll Road. Those revenues would be used to pay off bonds borrowed by… not the state but the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Under the Dems’ plan, the state would provide $450 million to offset interest payments on those bonds, thus providing relief to the toll road commuters. And where would the state get the money? By borrowing it from somewhere else.
Is that really the way we want to do business in Virginia? No! (The only possible defense for these jury-rigged subsidies is that the Rail-to-Dulles financing is so FUBAR that it’s probably beyond salvaging by any rational means.)
The situation in Hampton Roads is only slightly less demented. Presumably, the money for the Hampton Roads tunnels would offset tolls that the McDonnell administration was preparing to impose this summer — more than two years before the contemplated improvements were put into place. I do agree: It isn’t fair to ask Hampton Roads commuters to pay for a facilities that don’t exist yet. But the answer isn’t dunning taxpayers from around the state to subsidize a project they will never use! The answer is restructuring the deal financing so tolls aren’t imposed until the new facilities open.
Madness. Utter madness.
