Last night?s Transportation Town Hall opened with a standing ovation for Governor Tim Kaine. The crowd strongly reflected the concerns of Northern Virginia, with nearly all participants bearing lapel stickers stating ?Doing Nothing Costs A Lot.? This meeting occurred at a critical point as the General Assembly negotiates its way through different approaches to resolving Virginia?s transportation crisis. Kaine structured his presentation around that, highlighting whether the three principle transportation budgets (from House of Delegates, Senate, and his own) meet goals for better planning, greater accountability and responsible investing. Ultimately, he conceded, the real issue today is the last factor: investments.
Kaine explained that investment is necessary just to even maintain the current system and meet capacity. Currently, $337 million is removed from new construction funding only to sufficiently augment maintenance budgets to continue the current configuration. With this rate of maintenance needs, by 2010, no money will be left in the state budget to draw down any of Virginia?s share of Federal matching funds. Meanwhile, projects will become overwhelmed by demand and in 25 years, 59% of rushhour traffic will disolve into gridlock on crumbling roads.
To this, the House of Delegate transportation budget promises to draw down greater debt, cut down proposed projects (especially in rural areas) and rob funding intended for education, public safety health, the environment and economic development.
Highlights of the House plan include:
? Cutting teacher pay
? Slicing school dropout prevention programs
? Cutting school efficiency reviews
? Removing educational turn-around specialists
? Removing GED programs
? Removing programs to give disadvantaged students access to the AP exam
? Slicing base funding from colleges and universities
? Eliminating research investments
? Cutting local police funding
? Stopping gang prevention programs
? Stopping sex offender monitoring programs
? Cutting hospital reimbursements
? Terminating the electronic health record system
? Ending clean water programs
? Cutting funds to attract businesses to Virginia
As he turned to his own plan and the Senate plan, Kaine spent less time, but demonstrated clearly that while different on some funding streams, the overall principles of the two plan are similar, dedicated to actually addressing the real needs of the state without resorting to robbing other programs.
After his presentation, Kaine fielded a selection of questions from the audience. Michael Neuhard (Fairfax Co.?s fire chief) and another volunteer firefighter from Prince William County both emphasized how the crisis in transportation is having critical, life threatening consequences on public safety. Several speakers spoke in favor of transit and concern that privately financed ?HOT? lanes will erode the continued function of ?slug lines? (there are informal meeting places in Prince William County where drivers can pick up passengers so they can qualify to travel along high occupancy lanes on the highway). Kaine asserted his agreement with one commentator that he is opposed to any effort that blindly slices all budgets with across the board reductions. Finally, Kaine also addressed two of his leading anti-tax critics, qualifying that he never took an anti-tax pledge during the election, because he knew realistically that transportation needs exceed our available surplus?and indeed, his plan does not raise taxes to the General Fund.
At the end, Kaine urged all attendees to contact their state delegates and senators, urging them to pass the solution that most effectively addresses our state's future needs.
The event was well attended. Notable audience members included Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer, Delegate Steve Shannon, members of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, recent candidates Earnie Porta, Bruce Roemmelt, and Hilda Barg, House of Representatives candidate Ken Longmyer, and bloggers Ben Tribbett and Teddy Goodson.
Kaine should hold a conference for the General Assembly, schedule it for someplace near Dulles at 8 a.m., then just when it's starting announce the conference has to move to Arlington because of double booking, and make the downstaters spend two hours in traffic.
But both are broad-based, and there was actually some discussion of the sales tax in Richmond. Opposition came from the knee-jerk no-taxers AND some businesses, which disliked the sales tax, thinking it might hurt their sales. I personally doubt it.
My word to the Realtors (I'm one myself) was, if they'd first put on a push for the sales tax they wouldn't now be fighting increased transfer taxes. Maybe I can bring them around in the future, but Short-Sighted is the description of most of those who oppose the trnsportation plan
For example, the Senate's idea of a rebate for gasoline taxes is dumb -- I had just finished sorting out all these little receipts for my health FSA and realized how much clerical work there is to save a little bit of money.
However, Teddy, I would raise the income tax level -- put in a new step at, say, 6 or 6.5%. I don't know how much it would raise. Why? IT'S TAX DEDUCTIBLE ON OUR FEDERAL RETURNS. Virginians would be getting 25 to 30% of the money back from the feds.
The status quo of having the final step in the income tax at $17,000 is dumb. It should have been indexed to inflation years ago.
Now, raising the income tax is said to be poison, thanks in part to Mr. Norquist and his no-tax pledge. Norquist has been funded for years by the tobacco industry and the alcohol industry, to keep taxes down, because their industries are often hit the hardest when taxes are raised. What we should be doing, in addition to looking at the income tax structure, is going after the cigarette tax.
Funding of the new lanes is based on private contributions, so it's debatable whether the expansion will in fact hurt this ride share system (it can be argued that it might make HOV--and sluglines--more popular, since the new lanes will provide faster travel speeds). However, Kaine did indicate that he is dedicated to the continued function of slug lines.
My personal preference: forget the itty-bitty nagging 2 cents here or there added to a half dozen different fees. Go for an across-th-board, broad-based addition to the sales tax of one-quarter to one-half a percent. If some feel this is regressive and hits low-income folks, then give them a rebate on their state income tax.
The sales tax would get out-ofstaters that are using our roads to pass through Virginia, it would cover everybody, not singling out one particular element of society (even if you don't drive, your groceries arrive by truck, so you use roads), it would provide a predictable, steady stream of funding that is BONDABLE, unlike the piece-meal funding being proposed. And, frankly, I doubt that most people would even notice the small additional increase in the cost of their purchases.
Unfortunately, the sales tax was passed over as "not doable" by the Assembly, as if it were a third rail.
There's not an original idea in the rotten bunch.
One questioner smugly noted that Fairfax County School budget increases far outpaced both the rate of inflation and the percentage of increase in the number of students (a favorite argument of the no-tax crowd), and he demanded to know if Kaine intended to raise taxes for education. Kaine's simple answer was No, but he went on to explain the use of benchmarks and comparisons of actual dollars per pupil spent in other states (and Virginia is in the lower percentile in that respect). Curiously, no one mentioned the costs of underfunded No Child Left Behind federal mandates.