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Transportation fight begins
The General Assembly’s special session on transportation wasn’t set to begin until noon on Monday but both sides fired opening salvos early.At 10 a.m., Gov. Tim Kaine (D) and representatives from the Virginia Business Council and Virginia Association of Counties held a press conference to demand action and new funding for transportation.
An hour later, the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity fired back with a rally on the lawn, demanding better spending, rather than new taxes.
Kaine has spent weeks traveling the state, trying to sell voters on his transportation funding plan. On Monday, his message hadn’t changed, though he focused primarily on the economic impact of a failing road system.
“We’re not going to be able to grow our way out of a challenging economy by having a declining infrastructure,” he said.
Kaine’s plan is a three-pronged approach based on safety improvements, regional fixes and alternatives to roads. Each piece of the transportation puzzle is accompanied by a tax increase to fund it.
Kaine calls the first part of his proposal the “safety first” program. If approved, it would create a stable maintenance fund to keep bridges and roads in good repair.
A maintenance fund would be used to repair or replace aging bridges and roads and would also free up existing funds for new roads and transit projects. To pay for the maintenance fund, Kaine would increase the annual vehicle registration fee by $10. He’d also up the statewide automobile sales tax from 3 to 4 percent.
Those two tax hikes would raise $400 million in the first year, and all of that would be dedicated to the maintenance fund, according to Kaine.
The second piece of the Kaine plan is called “regional relief,” and is a targeted approach for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
The governor’s plan would increase the sales tax by 1 percent in both regions on everything except food and medicine. The funds would be used only for regional projects.
The final part of the transportation puzzle is Kaine’s “transportation change fund.” The governor has called for the creation of a special fund to pay for alternative solutions, such as transit, rail, telework and ridesharing.
Under his plan, 75 percent of the fund would be used for transit and rail projects while the rest could be used for new solutions to gridlock, as well as for airports and harbor projects that support economic development.
To fund the transportation change fund, Kaine has proposed increasing the grantor’s tax by 25 cents statewide. That’s less than the 40-cent tax hike that was approved only for Northern Virginia last year before being struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court.
Kaine was backed by Allen King, chairman of the Virginia Business Council, which is made up of the state’s biggest employers.
The council, King said, will support Kaine’s plan or “any other initiative that utilizes broad-based taxes or user fees.”
But a number of Republicans in both houses have declared that Kaine’s plan is dead on arrival.
And shortly after the end of Kaine’s press conference, some of them gathered outside with anti-tax activists to protest the Kaine solution.
Fairfax Sen. Ken Cuccinelli (R-37th), said Virginia families have been forced to alter their budgets in the last year to allocate more money for transportation. The state government, he said, should do the same.
“The one part of that budget that has been underfunded, and maybe the only part, is transportation,” he said.
Timothy Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity and a resident of Loudoun County, said the implication that Virginians need to do their share is insulting.
“To say that we’re not doing our part, that Virginians aren’t doing their part to fix the budget to solve transportation, is simply wrong,” he said.
Cuccinelli, echoing the predictions of pundits, added that he thinks Kaine’s plan will go nowhere.
“There’s going to be just enough backbone in Richmond here this week to stop taxes,” he said.
Kaine will address the legislature at 1 p.m. today. The session is expected to last between three and five days.
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