There's an end-of-year interview with Gov. Kaine on NBC-29. According to the station's website, Kaine "expects some battles" in the 2008 legislative session but is "cautiously optimistic about his initiatives." In addition, I thought the following comments were very interesting.
Last year...the Republican leadership in both houses cooked up a little transportation bill without letting anybody in on it. Staff weren't aware, they didn't talk with us, they didn't talk to the Democrats. They put it on everyone's desk on the last day of the session -- you gotta read and vote on this.There will never again be a secret deal like that. Once the Democrats have one house and the Republicans have the other, you automatically get more transparency. There won't be able to be some secret deal and people be forced to vote on it without having read it. And I think that's good for good government.
So I think it means that there will be more transparency, more robust debate, and...since everyone doesn't agree on everything, that can be challenging too. But I think in the end it will lead to more transparent government, things that will get aired and vetted and discussed in the open. You know, the whole abuser fee thing, I mean had that not been part of a bill that just, hey look at it, you gotta vote right now, some aspects of it might have worked out differently.
In other words, Kaine is arguing that the abuser fees (and the transportation deal more generally) were rammed down the throats of the legislature and the governor's office by Republican leadership last year. In the future, Kaine is saying, that won't happen, given the Democratic takeover of the state Senate. I certainly hope he's right about that.
With specific regard to the abuser fees, Kaine says "You could narrow it down to serious DUI and reckless driving offenses, make sure it applies equally to instaters and out of staters, that would be a fix I could support..." Personally, I'd prefer a "fix" that simply scrapped the abuser fees. They were a bad idea to begin with, they're wildly unpopular (170,000 signatures on a grassroots petition against them), and it's hard to see how they can be "fixed" without also reducing the amount of revenues they generate to the point that they're not even worth it anymore. Just scrap 'em.
P.S. By the way, Gov. Kaine also cites the transportation bill as one of his biggest accomplishments in the first two years of his governorship. I'm not sure how that can be reconciled with the "secret deal" comments, but then again, I'm just a blogger -- definitely NOT a politician.
Lowell, I agree with your ambiguity (above) on the Governor's position on abuser fees and what he said actually happened.
If the Republicans presented a last minute "transportation package", with no time to review, then why would the Governor concede when there was no time for proper review? Why would the GA Democrats concede (those that voted for it)?
The Governor has the bully pulpit and he had the ability to shine a blinding public light on this sort of shenanigans. But from what you've written about this, it seems that politics (the desire to get re-elected) usurped "doing the right thing".
I don't think Governor Kaine is a bad guy or a bad governor in general, but he is way off base with this one. As Lowell says, the best thing to do at this point is to scrap the fees (and perhaps the entire bill) and address each of the stated goals separately and intelligently. We need both funding and safer roads - two goals which need two drastically different efforts to be accomplished. And the current garbage Abusive Fees Program helps neither of the two goals.
There is no "fix" - they can only make it a little less bad. But it will still be very bad. The only solution is to scrap it and start over - this time doing it right from the beginning.