The Observer Newspapers |

July 18, 2008

Legislators Miss Another Opportunity in Special General Assembly Session

By Christopher L. Moore
Observer Editor

The Virginia General Assembly has once again closed a session without doing anything at all to solve the problems facing the commonwealth. In this case, it's transportation that's mired in trouble for the umpteenth year in a row.

The special session called by the governor this summer to address funding for transportation was doomed from the start. As many legislators have commented during this session, there was never any concerted effort to develop a consensus before the session, so that the session could be spent hammering out the details of an overall transportation funding plan.

Instead, it was left to the legislature to design, whittle and approve a plan during the session, and that was never going to happen. So dies another misguided effort to address our transportation woes.

What is frustrating about the never-ending debate over road funding at the state capitol is that it always seems to come down to the minority legislators who want to increase taxes and fees to fund road improvements and those who refuse to increase any expenses for the average taxpayer.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you want to pay for something, you have to fund it. If there really were a way to fund major road improvements in the billions of dollars over the next decade without raising taxes, someone would have discovered it by now.

Instead, the anti-tax legislators have come up once again with the silly idea that we should audit the Virginia Department of Transportation yet again to squeeze out more money from the operation. While keeping a close eye on government spending should always be a priority, there is no way that any significant money will be found by auditing VDOT. The organization has been squeezed to the max over the years, and anything left is meat, not fat.

Even if we could find a way to halve VDOT's operational budget, the portion of its budget that's not already spent on actually improving the state's transportation system, it would not be enough to make a significant contribution to the state's growing needs.

But what the General Assembly continues to drop the ball on is making small improvements to the overall funding system that could make a little bit of difference all along the way, perhaps even helping us avoid such major political battles every 20 years.

For example, the state's gasoline tax is a flat amount, 17 cents for every gallon of gas sold. But when the price of gas increases, the state receives no more money on that tax. The percent of the gas purchase price that is devoted to the state gas tax actually goes down as prices rise.

And as gas prices rise, people buy fewer gallons, leaving the state in the interesting position that in 2008 it is likely to collect less money from the gas tax than it did in 2007 or 2006.

Instead of enacting taxes that are so rigid, the gas tax should be set up as a percentage of the price of a gallon of gas or tied to an index so the state can record increases, or at least keep pace with changing market conditions. The tax should have been set up that way in the beginning, but the least our legislators can do is change the tax now.

This limitation of the gas tax doesn't make a huge difference year to year, but over a 20-year period could make all the difference in avoiding statewide crises in funding.

While there was no consensus on the transportation plan put forth by the governor for the special session, our representatives failed to enact any lasting improvements in the existing system either.

Simply put, those legislators who are philosophically opposed to new taxes would not budge, and those who see some taxes and fees as necessary for the state to meet its obligations could gain no ground.

Is this progress?

Don't be fooled by politicians who try to brush off their failure by telling you that it's not their fault. Don't be fooled by those who say they have the solution and it's everyone else who is wrong.

Don't be fooled by those who pass the buck by suggesting we conduct another review of VDOT to determine what we should do. We've done that, and we know what to do. Fund transportation, already.

Everyone knows what the solution is. It is our political leaders who are too timid, confused or inept to take action.