Senate panel allows bill

RICHMOND — A Senate panel’s inaction yesterday killed a bill that called for eliminating the car tax, despite protests from delegates who said the state’s $1.2 billion budget surplus should be used to end it.

The Senate Finance Committee took no action on a bill sponsored by several Northern Virginia legislators that would have unfrozen the car-tax-relief program and eliminated the tax by 2012. The committee’s procedural move, in which no senators were required to vote on the measure, effectively killed the bill.

“When you make promises to the people of the commonwealth, you ought to keep those promises,” said Delegate L. Scott Lingamfelter, Prince William County Republican and the bill’s main sponsor. “The General Assembly has made a promise, and we have not figured out a way to keep that promise, and I think we have a moral obligation to do that.”

The bill would have lifted the $950 million cap placed on the car-tax-relief program last year and created a new schedule, giving motorists an additional 5 percent of tax relief yearly through 2012. The total cost would have been $1.4 billion, Mr. Lingamfelter said.

The House passed the bill on a 73-21 vote earlier this month.

House leaders said yesterday that they expected the move, because the Senate had opposed the bill since it was introduced.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said House Speaker William J. Howell, Stafford County Republican. “We’ll keep trying.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Vincent F. Callahan Jr. said he was disappointed that lawmakers have yet to make good on their 1998 promise to fully eliminate the car tax.

“The citizens of Virginia hate this tax,” the Fairfax County Republican said. “We ought to do something to get rid of it, if we can afford it. And we can afford it. You wonder why people are cynical.”

Mr. Callahan said that in the next few days, he expects a “rosy” report that will show tremendous revenue growth that adds $150 million to the budget surplus, which already exceeds $1 billion. He said the extra money should be used to end the car tax.

“It’s all Northern Virginia’s revenue,” he said.

Many Northern Virginia lawmakers argue that the car tax is especially unfair to the booming region because more people there buy more expensive cars.

James S. Gilmore III, a Republican who was elected governor in 1997 by an overwhelming majority on a promise to fully eliminate the car tax, said last week that he is “certain Virginians will one day have a zero bill.”

“Despite years of trying to vote this down, it remains as popular today as it has ever been,” he said. “Sooner or later, the people of Virginia are going to get what they want and demand from the political system.”

The relief program proved to be more costly than Mr. Gilmore had estimated.

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