The General Assembly special session on transportation drove off the cliff yesterday when the state Senate killed the legislative package submitted by the House. Acrimony was widespread as Gov. Timothy M. Kaine joined lawmakers in both houses in pointing fingers of blame. Said Kaine in a press release issued yesterday:
After months of delay and inaction, the House leadership repeatedly promised to come back for this Special Session to engage in a serious, thoughtful discussion about a long-term transportation solution. The House leadership chose instead to offer bills that were politically expedient – relying on double-counting money, running up the state’s credit card, and diverting existing revenue designated for education, public safety, and health care.
Del. Franklin P. Hall, D-Richmond, voiced a familiar theme: The obstructionist House Republicans refused to compromise. “Clearly there was a failure by the House Republican leadership to try to reach out to the Senate and try to find some common ground,” said Hall as quoted in the Times-Dispatch.
The obstructionist-House meme was replicated by the Daily Press. As John Bull and Hugh Lessig stated outright: “Republicans who control the House of Delegates refused to budge from their no-tax, no-fee, limited-toll position.” If past is prelude, editoral writers around the state will join the chorus in blaming the entire fiasco on the House Republicans.
It’s human nature to think that the other guy is the one who needs to do the compromising. But “compromise” is by definition a two-way street. Permit me a few observations:
- Fact: The $1 billion-a-year tax proposals advanced by the Axis of Taxes were defeated last spring. Yet Kaine and the Senate re-submitted the very same proposals without meaningful modification of any kind for consideration in the special section. It takes a lot of gall for AoT (Axis of Taxes) partisans to accuse the House of failing to compromise when they made no compromise themselves!
- Fact: The House of Delegates passed a package that would have injected $2.4 billion into the transportation system. (I’m not endorsing this package, merely noting that the House passed it.) That’s a lot more money than the House had proposed back in the spring. It wasn’t exactly what the AoT wanted, which was permanently higher taxes, but it was a compromise. The Senate deep-sixed it into oblivion.
- Fact: Recognizing that there is more to solving the transportation crisis than flooding the system with money, the House, backed by many Democrats, passed a package of VDOT and land-use reforms (some of which were tabled until next year) that attempted to address root causes of congestion. These reforms were independent of the tax issue. Gov. Kaine, who has made land-use reforms one of his big talking points, made no visible effort to support or even improve upon these proposals. The Senate shot down all but a handful of the least significant items.
The obstructionist label is usually applied to the group that doggedly opposes change of any kind. That label, I would argue, rightly belongs to those who would blindly prop up the failed, Business As Usual transportation system with new money without making any meaningful effort to change the system.
The obstructionist label also can be applied to those who advocate policies that fly in the face of popular opinion. As documented in a late July poll, a large majority of the electorate opposed the broad-based tax schemes that the Governor and Senate were calling for. The House positions came closer to reflecting the sentiments of popular opinion. The Axis of Taxes positions reflected the sentiments of the business, civic, governmental and journalistic elites.
Despite the effort of the AoT to define the transportation crisis as a lack of fiscal resources, traffic congestion is not a problem that can be solved simply by throwing more money into the system. The progressive forces are those who would change the system — low-tax Republicans on the right and the conservation/environmental camp on the left. The obstructionists are those who doggedly defend the status quo, block change and would tax an unwilling public to advance their own goals.