From the Oleszek campaign:
August 2, 2007Senator Cuccinelli:
In a letter to your constituents, including myself, dated July 31st, you attempted to explain your position on the notorious abuser fees recently passed by the Republican-led General Assembly. Since these fees are nothing but a tax on abusive drivers, I will refer to them as what they are - an abuser tax.
Your letter raises many questions and fails to provide any answers.
The facts of your voting record, as presented in your letter are:
* You voted against the abuser tax in 2006
* You voted for the abuser tax in 2007
* You were the deciding vote for the transportation bill that included the abuser tax
* You voted against the final bill which included the abuser tax in 2007
* You voted against the final bill which "reduced the General fund dollars for Northern Virginia" and "allow[s] an unelected body called the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to raise taxes on everyone in our communities..."In addition to these confusing statements, you make the following claim on your campaign literature: "Building Roads- Senator Cuccinelli cast the decisive vote allowing Northern Virginia to get and keep $400 million annually to fight congestion!"
Based on all of the information that you have provided, I have the following questions for you:
1) Have you not signed a pledge to your constituents - and by constituents, I mean a Washington, DC special interest group - to vote against all taxes? Is voting in favor of a fee that is designed to raise revenue to pay for government services not a tax?
2) If you were the deciding vote to get and keep $400 million dollars, weren't you also the deciding vote to allow the outrageous abuser tax to be put in place?
3) If you were the deciding vote to send the transportation bill - which resulted in $400 million annually to fight congestion - to the Governor, weren't you the deciding vote to "allow an unelected body... to raise taxes on everyone..." as you so bluntly put it? Again, what about your pledge to special interest groups not to raise taxes?
Now that over 150,000 Virginians have signed a petition against the abuser taxes, you are calling for a special session. After all of your talk about saving the taxpayer's money and trimming government, it's interesting that your proposal to fix the problem is to invest tens of thousands of the taxpayer's dollars on a special session. Wouldn't it have made more sense to vote against the bill in the first place?
Ken, when you cast a vote on a bill, you shouldn't vote based on the need to fill blank space on your campaign literature. You should vote for a bill because you believe it is the right thing to do for the citizens of the Commonwealth, and your constituents. Either you are proud of the vote - and should be willing to take responsibility for the negative effects on your constituents that will result from it, or you should have voted no.
Your call for a special session raises additional questions:
4) Is this your plan for governance? Each time there is public outcry regarding a policy you have voted for will you call for a special session?
5) If you consider the fees so egregious that a special session is necessary to repeal them, why didn't you vote against them when the bill needed your vote for passage?
6) How can you be so proud of a vote to put it on your campaign literature but be so ashamed of the same vote that you call for a special session?
It takes leadership to get something you don't like removed from a bill. It takes bi-partisanship to change something you don't like about a bill. And it takes courage to vote against a bill if you don't like it.
Sincerely,
Janet Oleszek
Constituent & Democratic Candidate for the 37th State Senate District
So what is it, Senator Cuccinelli? Were you for the abuser fees before you were against them? Against them before you were for them? Both simultaneously? Neither? Or will you just say anything to get re-elected? Hey, maybe you should ask "Ron," he might know! :)
It should be called a "driving tax." People enjoy driving and there is no question that what we have here are fees for driving, albeit improperly. Nearly everyone can make a mistake but, in the past, penalty fees were designed to deter further mistakes. Now, these driving taxes are a way to pay for highway projects. That's not right. Everyone who drives our highways should pay, not just the drivers who get caught making mistakes.
What our politicians, mostly Republican politicians, don't want to do is face up to the obligation to vote for a gas tax increase. Unfortunately, that is the best solution. It taxes those who use the roads. It also reduces traffic and, given that global warming/climate change is caused primarily by cars, it has yet another benefit.
It's time to face up to the music Virginia. Call your legislators and demand they replace these outrageous driving taxes with an increase in the gas tax.
There's a reason why no one else is calling it a tax, even when Lowell had a chance to after posting the article. Instead, he says:
"Were you for the abuser fees before you were against them?"
Even *Lowell* doesn't think its a tax.
However, you make the assumption that any source of revenue for the government is a tax. This simply isn't so. Calling it a tax, especially in the extremely heavy-handed and opportunistic way that she does, just comes off as desperate and hollow.
It is a fee. It is a punishment for breaking the law, not a sum demanded for using a service that the government provides or levied across the board on income or property. And bashing Republicans for looking for altnerative ways to raise revenue seems excessively partisan and hypocritical. We can debate the merits of the alternative all day long--and note that I don't neccesarily support all of the aspects of the abuser fees--but the more Oleszek calls it a tax, the more it comes off as a cheap stunt.
- the deciding vote for abuser fees
- the deciding vote for unelected taxing authorities
It's our turn to be the deciding vote.