our citizen legislature run by mostly lawyers?
Evidently not very good lawyers. How could they pass a transportation package that may be unconstitutional?
Boggles the mind.

what will be the next step, after Republican infighting reduces the transportation package to rubble, and we are still sitting in traffic for two hours each way? Armed revolution?

At least let's try it and see how it goes.  It can't be any worse than what we've seen under a Republican General Assembly.

That's why we all need to get to work if we want change.  If we're happy with the status quo, then we should just relax, sit back, and don't get involved.  Those are the choices as I see them.

construction today on an outer-beltway, metro to dulles etc, we will still be sitting in traffic for two hours each way, every day, for the next twenty years.

The time to have gotten started on traffic issues in NOVA would have been 1980.  TOO LATE NOW.  Because it costs too much.  However, in 1980, NOViAns were too busy making Till Hazel a rich man and letting other developers build, build, build, without paying for infrastructure.  The result is that a lot of area commuters are prisoners in, and slaves to, their automobiles.

Now we have Falls Church and Arlington looking to "narrow" Rt. 50, as part of "traffic abatement".  What the hell are these people thinking.

One word - FUBAR!

This CLEVER attept at transportaion funding, is so far beneath our best effort, and so far beneath OUR Gov. it needs to be scraped, shreded and fed back to the idiots that put it on paper.  Start over, get it right and stay in session until you do.

before he modified and then signed the transportation package. McDonnell is always eager to give his advice, but I can recall once or twice (as during the political campaign) when he clearly had it wrong. This should be vastly entertaining to watch.

What's not so entertaining is the fact the transportation funding program is shot for now anyway, and so we are back to Go and without getting $200 either. Time not only to elect Democrats to Senate and House of Delegates, but to demand an addition to sales tax and to gasoline tax and even to income tax. (Remember the infrastructure maintenance as well as the traffic; remember the needs of schools, too)

Bill et al could not go back to the electorate without some form of transportation bill AND without tax increases- (its an election year after all).

For the sake of claiming "We passed a transporation bill-- Congratulations to US"..Virginia citizens have the latest VA legislature "fubar".

I was stuck on 1-95 (southbound) last week-end and pulled into a WaWa. It was jammed packed with cars..mostly "out of staters". I thought of the lost opportunity for Virginia. All of the travelers could contribute to a better Virginia transportation system  - if only the state legislature had a spine and increased the gasoline tax.

"If you want more of the same- keep doing what you're doing"

is what I've been saying all along! This IS an excessive FINE / tax outlawed by the constitution! And it should win on those merits alone.

These fines are RIDICULOUSLY - mind bogglingly, out of proportion to the offense committed, especially if no damage to property was done. And I doubt it costs the state or court system $3,000 to file paperwork for a reckless driver. Not only that, you can't expect the most widely classed citizen (that would be the working poor) to pay a goddamn fee that insanely high. People already know from my efforts that the WA post made public, that NJ and MI already have these laws, and they don't work because people can't pay! It just forces people onto welfare once they lose their job and puts a bigger strain on the system by paying more out than they would have taken in from the damn fee.

These idiot boob govt. "lawyers" just copied it verbatim from NJ without bothering to check the facts. I don't believe for one goddamn second of the "glowing report" albone head got from NJ officials. Either that, or NJ lied to him because the report is out there for all to see how NJ is failing with their driver tax law.

Oh, and like I've been saying, if you think it's going to make everything better by the court striking down the law on the 1 fact of "equal ripoff" and having the legislature rewrite it to include out of state drivers, it STILL won't work. Because then you'll have the treasury dept. knocking on your door taking your tax refund, snooping into your bank acct., and levying your wages to enforce the law, with the backing of the attorney generals office. Just like MICHIGAN does it.

Get it through your heads everyone, this law is an abomination. There are better ways to collect money that doesn't just go into the GENERAL FUND to be misspent on the whim of any legislator for whatever reason. Because it sure as hell isn't going to be earmarked for roads. They're lying.

is a monstrosity for months now.  That's why I urged Gov. Kaine to veto it or completely rewrite it.

It needs to be re-written in its entirity, which is why we can't call a special session now to eliminate only the most controversial aspects while not doing anything to fix the omnibus legislation in its entirity.  Let everyone wait it out until next year when we can lock them in a room and not let them out again until they have a clean, workable plan.

Frankly I wonder about the legislative sense of many of the challengers who are screaming for a special session for this very reason.