GOP hit hard on road plan

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The multibillion-dollar transportation plan Virginia lawmakers approved earlier this year is a constitutional train wreck that sells out the party's basic tenets of low taxation and less government, a group of Republicans says.

"This is an ongoing massacre," Delegate Robert G. Marshall, Prince William County Republican, told The Washington Times this week. "Blood has been drawn and the incumbents sure are going to take the biggest heat. . .. If the Republican leadership thinks they can get out of this unscathed by shutting their eyes and hoping it goes away, it is not going to work."

Mr. Marshall is one of 18 plaintiffs in a sweeping constitutional challenge filed last week in Richmond Circuit Court by former state Republican Party Chairman Patrick M. McSweeney.

At a press conference in Richmond yesterday, Mr. McSweeney outlined the 13-count lawsuit, while four anti-tax advocates chided Republican leaders for supporting what they consider a "fundamentally flawed" policy and a "stunningly inept ... political strategy going into an election."

Election Day is Nov. 6 and all 140 seats in the General Assembly are up for election.

"To me this is the antithesis of conservative principles," said Paul Jost, chairman of the Virginia Club for Growth. "This is the sort of thing we have been working against all these years."

John Taylor, president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, said if Republicans hoped the plan would help them woo voters in Northern Virginia's Democrat-leaning suburbs, the region's outcry against the new abuser fee program suggests the strategy has backfired.

"I don't suspect it helped them in Northern Virginia and I suspect it hurt them in a lot ofother places," Mr. Taylor said. "While I don't think a lot of conservatives will go to the polls and vote for Democrats, I do think it is a likely scenario that conservatives don't go to the polls on Election Day."

The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the plan's major revenue streams — from the unpopular fees against Virginia drivers to new taxing powers given to unelected transportation authorities in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.

"The lawsuits are important because I do think there are constitutional problems with parts of the bill," said Delegate Jeffrey M. Frederick, Prince William County Republican and an opponent of the plan. Mr. Frederick is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit. "I don't really care how we get to the end result, but I do hope that Northern Virginia Transportation Authority's (NVTA) ability to raise taxes is deemed unconstitutional."