After the latest round of press releases and media coverage, the transportation debate is still being framed purely as a budgetary issue: How much money needs to be injected into Virginia’s failing transportation system and where should it come from: General Fund budget surpluses or new, dedicated taxes?
The House Republican leadership fed that perception yesterday by criticizing Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s proposal to devote $500 million in one-time surplus revenues to transportation as too little, too late. House leaders reiterated their support for improved VDOT performance and for land use reforms, but they offered nothing new and the remarks were totally ignored in the press coverage.
Washington Post: “Kaine to Seek $500 Million in Bid to Alleviate VA’s Traffic Ills”
Times-Dispatch: “Transit Proposals Offered in Gov. Kaine’s Budget”
Virginian-Pilot: “Kaine adds $500 Million for transportation”
Free Lance-Star: “Kaine Wants $500 Million for Transportation”
Roanoke Times: “Transportation up for Debate”
So far, House initiatives to restructure state transportation and land use have generated zero interest in the news media. The meta-narrative has been well established: It’s all about new revenue. By arguing that Kaine isn’t spending enough of the General Fund surplus, the House only reinforces that perception.
The House does plan to introduce legislation amounting to the biggest overhaul in transportation and land use in 50 years — a veritable revolution in the governance structure. If the past is prologue, the capital press corps will give it footnote treatment. Assuming House Speaker William J. Howell and House Transportation Committee Chair Leo Wardrup want to line up public support for their reform proposals, which they’ll need if they want to pass their reforms, they have to change the terms of debate. They have to create a new meta-narrative around which a lazy, uninquisitive press corps can organize its stories.
Conservative, low-tax Republicans can’t out-spend Democrats and the “pragmatic” wing of the Republican Party. They will lose that debate every time. They have to re-cast the debate. The issue isn’t how much money to spend, it’s how the money is spent. The issue is creating a funding system in which people pay for transportation in direct proportion to which they use it. The issue is adapting a 1930s-vintage transportation system and a 1950s-era land use system for the 21st century. Unless the House can change the meta-narrative, it will lose the debate — if not in 2007 General Assembly session, then in the 2007 electoral campaign.
