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Transportation solution unlikely
The gridlock continued Wednesday as the General Assembly entered day three of its special session to resolve the state’s transportation issues.
A handful of competing plans are working their way through the legislature but it seems unlikely that any will be enacted.
Gov. Tim Kaine (D) has proposed a series of tax and fee increases aimed at funding road maintenance and alternative modes of transportation but his plan has been met with overwhelming hostility in both houses. The funding package is being held in limbo in the House and Kaine has been unable to even find a sponsor in the Senate.
Senate Democrats, led by Springfield Sen. Dick Saslaw (D-35th), appear poised to approve a competing series of tax hikes that may be acceptable to Kaine, but the House of Delegates has vowed to kill any tax increases.
In the meantime, House leaders are working to position the Senate as the ones causing the roadblock. Speaker William Howell (R-28th) has refused to allow any revenue bills to be heard in the House until the Senate adopts a plan of its own. Once the Senate has agreed on a proposal, the House will consider both the Senate plan and the two dozen competing House plans, including the governor’s.
The result is that delegates have done next to nothing since Monday, waiting for the Senate to act first.
By Wednesday morning, it seemed likely that the Senate would act by the end of the day. The primary plan being considered is Saslaw’s tax increase package. The bill has already gone through several changes and more were expected but as of Wednesday morning, it included a 1-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase each year for the next six years and a ½-percent titling tax on car sales.
Saslaw estimated that the gas tax hike would mean the average driver pays an extra $7.50 each year to fuel up.
“For that price, he has to give up one-and-a-half Big Mac meals per year,” Saslaw said. “That ain’t a lot.”
To offset the extra pain at the pump, Saslaw’s plan would remove a ½-percent sales tax on food.
“That would save that family and every family of four an average of $50 a year,” he said, pointing out that the food tax savings for a family is more than the one-car gas tax cost, even when fully-phased in at 6 cents per gallon.
The Saslaw plan also includes regional packages for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Northern Virginia residents would pay an extra ½-percent sales tax, a 40-cent increase in the grantor’s tax and an additional $5 per night on hotel rooms. That package would raise $340 million per year for Northern Virginia projects, Saslaw said.
Hampton Roads residents would pay similar tax increases for $221 million per year in road improvements.
Prince William Sen. Chuck Colgan (D-29th), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had a similar but competing tax increase proposal but pulled it after his committee adopted Saslaw’s bill.
“I think it might just add to confusion to have two bills go into the House,” he said.
The likely outcome is that the Senate will adopt some compromise version of the Saslaw bill on Wednesday afternoon but that the House of Delegates will waste no time in killing the measure.
The House, which is controlled by anti-tax Republicans, favors audits of VDOT instead of tax increases. A proposal calling for an external audit of VDOT is the dominant House plan, with many delegates maintaining that enough cost-savings could be found at the agency to better fund transportation.
Springfield Del. Dave Albo (R-42nd) referred to the audit supporters as the “do-nothing crowd” and has introduced his own spending plan, backed by Herndon Del. Tom Rust (R-86th).
The Albo-Rust plan is to reform VDOT for cost-savings but also to institute regional tax increases approved last year by the General Assembly. Last year’s plan was ruled unconstitutional by the Virginia Supreme Court because it gave taxing authority to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, an unelected body.
The bill also funds statewide maintenance with a 2-percent increase in the hotel tax, a $20 increase on traffic court costs, a truck surtax and a $150 one-time driver’s license fee that would not apply to 16- and 17-year-olds.
But Albo’s bill is also being held in limbo in the House of Delegates and it seems unlikely to be adopted even if it is heard.
Other Republican delegates favor adding tolls to existing roads to pay for construction and one toll proposal for Hampton Roads is likely to win the support of the full House, if not the Senate.
The big problem, said Centreville Delegate Tim Hugo (R-40th), is that there is no support for a statewide solution, only for regional projects.
Hugo said he spent the weekend talking to constituents and concluded that three-quarters would be willing to grudgingly accept regional tax increases if and only if the money stays in Northern Virginia.
“A statewide tax will bring down the bill,” he said.
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