Talk about being prophetic, how”s this? “Instead of either simplicity or fairness, Virginia will end up with a transportation-funding plan that gathers an inadequate mess of nickels and dimes that won”t be enough to keep traffic from getting worse and won”t start building roads for years. You can thank politics for that,” read an editorial in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot.
That statement was not this week”s news but a quote I incorporated in a column about transportation last year when the Virginia General Assembly adjourned with “an inadequate funding plan.”
So here we are, back at the starting line an entire year later as yet another legislative session comes to a close with more gridlocked roads and few gateways to pass through them.
Faced with even less funding, road and rail projects are in jeopardy.
Federal transportation officials derailed the proposed Metro extension to Washington Dulles International Airport and the state courts threw out the mishmash of dedicated funding sources for transportation cobbled together last year on a tax technicality that was foul from the start.
Gov. Tim Kaine and Virginia lawmakers knew they were on shaky legal ground when they established the regional transportation bodies in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and conveyed taxing authority to their unelected appointees.
Want another replay? “The governor has done the best he can with a real piece of [junk],” Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, Fairfax Democrat, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last March. “He”s put a mink coat on a pig.”
But it was politically expedient in the 2007 election year for state representatives to provide themselves with a convenient scapegoat — in the incarnation of those regional authorities and nebulous fees — when they went before the voters last fall. Those gimmicks allowed campaigners to talk out of both sides of their mouths, proclaiming that they had funded transportation projects without raising taxes.
This circuitous road map, as we look in the rearview mirror, led to a dead end.
I say now as I said before: Virginia lawmakers will need to develop backbones and do the hard work of either finding government fat to trim or raising the gas tax at a minimum. And they need to get it right this time.
I know it”s an unpopular thought, but Virginia hasn”t seen an increase in gas taxes since 1986. Reports indicate that an increase of a penny per gallon could generate $55 million alone and is a more reliable source of funding.
However, with higher housing costs, gasoline at $3.45, and a family-size box of cornflakes costing $4, tax increases are even less salable this year.
Folks get squeezed from all avenues, one way or another.
A report in this paper yesterday said motorists in the D.C. area pay a $5 billion “crash tax” annually. That amounts to $970 per person per year for direct and indirect costs — property damage, medical costs, travel delays and lost productivity and wages — associated with traffic accidents, according to AAA.
The AAA report, “Crashes vs. Congestion: What”s the Cost to Society?” included the cost of fuel wasted in traffic jams in its calculations.
More deja vu? “None of this lunacy of passing the buck back and forth between lanes like traffic going nowhere will help any of us trying to get from Point A to Point B. Think of all the lost time from work, from families, from civic responsibilities, not to mention money from the wasted gas alone, wavering like mystical vapors in the polluted air,” I wrote last year.
Who really knows which way to turn? Now that the courts have deemed the regional authorities unconstitutional, state and local officials are trying to determine how to refund the $8.3 million by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority garnered from state vehicle inspections, auto repairs and hotel stays. And they should.
The estimated $5.2 million generated by the unpopular and excessive abusive-driver fees were destined to be ditched at the beginning of the 60-day session. And Virginia”s legislators have double Dutch trouble as the General Assembly clock runs out. Last year, Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, was forced to convene a special session to cobble together that jigsaw puzzle of fees and fines. This year portends a repeat performance.
Keep in mind that every time the governor of Virginia or Maryland calls a special session, it costs the taxpayers money that could be allotted elsewhere. This trend toward special sessions begs the question of whether state legislatures ought to consider constitutional changes to lengthen their legislative sessions given the more complex issues at this juncture.
Note that Virginia and Maryland lawmakers called special legislative sessions last year to deal with tempestuous and partisan budget issues that they couldn”t complete within their allotted 45- and 90-day gridlocked sessions.
We can”t wait another year for the next General Assembly session for our legislators to play political shell games that bring no end to congestion in sight. The toll in lost lives, time and revenue is too high.
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