Different plans for same county

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Their legislative offices are roughly 15 feet apart, and their popularity in Stafford County tops the charts.

But their views on how to fix the state’s transportation network and cater to the needs of their shared constituency are as far as Arlington is from Bristol, Va.

Sen. John H. Chichester and House Speaker William J. Howell are the leaders of the state Republican Party’s warring factions on roads, but represent the same constituency, which appears to be split on taxes.

Mr. Chichester says that his constituents want long-term transportation improvements and that raising taxes is the way to get it done.

“We have the tools. All we need is the resolve to allow users of the system to pay for the system,” he said earlier this year.

Mr. Howell says the voters who elected him oppose tax increases. With the “booming economy” and the state’s budget surplus, “going back to the hard-working people of Virginia for higher taxes is not the answer,” he said earlier this year.

“They are arguably the two most powerful elected people in the state legislature, representing the same district and are speaking from two different sides,” said Bob Hunt, chairman of the Republican Party of Stafford County. “The real interesting part about it is they are both very popular.

“I think John Chichester sincerely thinks we need a cash infusion to fix transportation,” said Mr. Hunt, who opposes the senator’s plan. “And Mr. Howell, I think, sincerely thinks money alone will not solve the problem.”

Such a massive philosophical divide didn’t always exist between the two lawmakers who have been friends for nearly 30 years.

“If you go back to 1991, when the Republican slogan was 51 in ‘91 — which means we were trying to get a majority in ‘91 — one of the main platforms was that we were not going to raise taxes,” said John Van Hoy, former Republican Party chairman in Stafford. “Senator Chichester was a part of that, and so was Delegate Howell.”

Mr. Chichester, who has served in the Senate since 1978, has developed into the state’s leading tax maverick over the years.

Some say the transformation began after he lost his bid for lieutenant governor to L. Douglas Wilder in 1985. Others say the senator changed when he began pawing over the state’s bank accounts as co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in the mid-1990s.

Still, some say his maturation is simply symbolic of the split that surfaced in the Republican Party in the aftermath of former Gov. James S. Gilmore III’s car-tax relief program.

“The original promise of the Gilmore car-tax cut was that it wouldn’t hurt services,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, political science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “Turns out, there was pain that came from that.

“In many ways, you have these lawmakers being torn,” Mr. Farnsworth added. “Many of them come out of anti-tax movements, but at the same time, there is a lot of development pressure.”

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