RICHMOND (AP) — Gov. Tim Kaine is calling the General Assembly into special session beginning June 23 to consider a new transportation funding package, legislators said today.
Del. Thomas D. Rust, R-Fairfax, disclosed the date to a gathering of Democratic and Republican legislators from Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia called to discuss legislation.
Kaine’s office refused to comment on the report, but did not deny the date.
The governor had disclosed last week he intended to convene the House and Senate the final two weeks of June. He had alerted the legislative Democrats to his plans earlier this week.
He will ask lawmakers to consider statewide taxes to fund highway maintenance and regional transportation districts authorized to generate their own revenue for projects in the state’s two most populous and congested regions.
The session comes in response to legislation less than one year old that created separate authorities with power to levy taxes for road projects in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.
It also comes a day after 25 of the most potent lobbying organizations in Richmond representing retailers, developers, real estate agents, contractors, school teachers and localities called for increases in the sales tax or the gasoline tax or perhaps both to pay for road maintenance.
Both of the regional plans were voided by a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling on Feb. 29 that they were unconstitutional because they were imposed by unelected authorities.
Another provision of the law that levied steep surcharges on abusive traffic violators was hurriedly repealed in March after Virginians were outraged to discover the fees did not apply to nonresidents.
The punitive fees, in force for only nine months, never approached the $65 million they were intended to generate annually for statewide road maintenance.
At a candid and informal discussion session in a tony suburban office park, legislators spoke bluntly for the need to not only raise new statewide revenue for soaring costs of upkeep and repair of roads, but the urgent need for new transportation projects in their urban and suburban regions.
Partisan disagreements and regional ones are enormous impediments to a compromise.
“We are the new urban majority,” said Del. Paula Miller, D-Norfolk, articulating a shared sentiment among the lawmakers that rural areas must help pay for the needs.
“We have some political muscle here and it’s time we flex it,” she said. “The patience of Hampton Roads residents is running out.”
With enormous population growth in Northern Virginia and strong growth in Hampton Roads, several legislative seats will shift to those areas from rural parts of the state when district lines are redrawn in three years.
Revenue the robust economies of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads generate constitutes much of the state budget and underwrites a large share of the programs and services the state provides statewide.
“We’ve got to tell our rural friends that they’ve got to help us or there will be serious consequences,” Rust said.
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