The Northern Virginia Transportation Authority may be broke and powerless, but that’s not stopping it from agitating for more money. In a creative, Internet-era ploy, reports a chirpy Washington Post article today, the authority is asking Northern Virginia commuters to make videos of their miserable rides and post them on its YouTube page for NoVa legislators to see. (As of 8:41 a.m., no one had posted any videos yet.)
As Eric Weiss explains: “The YouTube effort is part of an Internet-based lobbying campaign by NVTA to regain its money and clout after the Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that its taxing power was unconstitutional. The main reason NVTA members are turning to the Internet is because it’s free.”
But the NVTA must not be entirely broke. At the very least, from what I can deduce from its website, the authority has enough money to support an executive director, hold meetings, maintain a website and pen public policy statements. And it’s using that money, which comes directly or indirectly from taxpayers, to agitate for more tax money. Here’s the NVTA message to commuters:
Virginia’s General Assembly needs to take action now! Contact your representative and ask them to implement the NVTA taxes and fees and enact a statewide transportation plan that meets the needs of Northern Virginia and the Commonwealth.
The NVTA lists “eight principles” to guide Northern Virginia transportation solutions here. The principles can be summarized succinctly as demanding “mo’ money” to build more road and rail capacity in Northern Virginia at both the local and regional levels. Without saying so explicitly, the NVTA is pushing for more money for itself.
Does anyone else have a problem with a quasi-state entity like the NVTA using taxpayer dollars to agitate for… more taxpayer dollars? It’s one thing for the elected officials who comprise the membership of the organization to lobby for particular transportation solutions, but it’s another for a taxpayer-funded organization to engage in such advocacy itself. The Business-As-Usual viewpoint already dominates the Mainstream Media, and the Axis of Taxes already enjoys a huge fund-raising advantage over taxpayers and environmentalists in the growth-management controversy. The NVTA initiative is just piling on.
I will defend the rights of home builders, road contractors and other special interests to spend their own money to advance their agendas in Richmond — the U.S. Constitution guarantees the rights “of the people peaceably to assembly, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” But I have a big problem — a very big problem — when advocacy groups co-opt tax dollars to promote their causes.
This cute little YouTube initiative needs to end now.
Update: John Mason, the NVTA executive director, defends the YouTube initiative as follows:
With respect to the premise underlying your comments on NVTA advocacy, Virginia Code (§15.2-4840) specifically authorizes the NVTA to serve as “an advocate of the transportation needs of Northern Virginia before state and federal governments”. Our approach is based on using YouTube, which is free. We are simply facilitating communication between citizens and their legislative policymakers.
