Posted on 04/01/2007 8:19:56 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
You've heard about this 36,000-word bill that proposes to pay for new roads with a menu of taxes and fees, including a sales tax on gas, and on house and car purchases.
You've also heard the pleas - from, well, everybody - for simplicity and fairness and maybe enough money to actually fix the problem we've got. The kind of money Virginia could reap from a higher gas tax, or a bump in the sales tax. Or from wider tolling.
But instead of either simplicity or fairness, Virginia will end up with a transportation-funding plan that gathers an inadequate mess of nickels and dimes that won't be enough to keep traffic from getting worse, and won't start building roads for years. You can thank politics for that.
As much attention as this fight over transportation has gathered, it is another piece of legislation - one that slid unnoticed through the General Assembly and has been signed by the governor - that may help Virginia build the roads its transportation plan can't afford.
Speaking before Rotarians in downtown Suffolk a few weeks ago, State Sen. Fred Quayle hailed HB2314 as the sleeper bill of the 2007 General Assembly session. Sponsored by Woodbridge Del. Scott Lingamfelter, it passed by big margins in both the House and Senate.
So what does it do? HB2314 "[a]llows the Commonwealth Transportation Board, in accordance with all applicable federal and state statutes and requirements, to impose and collect tolls for the use of any component of the Interstate Highway System within the Commonwealth, with the proceeds to be deposited into the Transportation Trust Fund and allocated by the Board."
Got that? If not, you might want to go back and read it again. If you travel on Virginia's highways, HB2314 could eventually cost you. Which might not be such a bad thing.
Strong disagreement remains about the impact of the legislation. A few officials dismiss it as merely technical. Others see its potential as vast and welcome.
Within the confines of federal law, and with the approval of the Commonwealth Transportation Board, HB2314 appears to allow Virginia to collect tolls on any highway with an I in front of it, including the sundry 64s around Hampton Roads.
Drive on the road, and you'd pay for maintaining it and expanding it. It's a direct user fee. What could be simpler?
Tolls were always going to be a big feature of Virginia's transportation future - they're an integral, if ignored, part of the transportation plan - but if HB2314 means what its proponents think it means, it might considerably raise the stakes, essentially allowing tolls anywhere in Virginia.
Much remains to be worked out between what the feds allow and what Virginia wants. Much, too, needs to be worked out about where the tolls would be collected, when and how. And even if.
Still, the basic idea is not new. Former Gov. Gerald Baliles back in '05 suggested that tolling interstates could pay for a huge portion of Virginia's transportation needs. The math worked out to 85-cent tolls charged at 38 places, raising a cool billion dollars a year.
Lingamfelter's legislation could enable Virginia to do that or something like it, providing the feds and the CTB go along.
Tolls, according to Lingamfelter's bill, could be charged on highways "to finance interstate construction and reconstruction, promote efficiency in the use of highways, reduce traffic congestion, improve air quality and for such other purposes as may be permitted by federal law."
It's not clear that the feds would agree to any or all of that. But they might. And it's hard not to argue that a toll is a fairer user fee than a bump in the real estate purchase tax, one of the myriad ways in which the GOP plan raises money.
For weeks now, even proponents of the GOP plan have been grousing that it's not perfect while acknowledging that it's also not enough to make up for years of neglect and underspending. The governor's amendments, while helpful politically, still don't put enough money in the kitty.
While the Republican House leadership has said consistently that additional taxes would have doomed their plan, they and everyone else have been remarkably silent about Lingamfelter's bill.
Which, given how much it might raise for transportation in the commonwealth, how much good that money could do, and how much it is still needed, might actually represent a kind of golden, and significant, silence.
Would somebody be so kind as to spread the word to other Virginia Freepers?
I guess the "personal property tax" that Virginia puts on all their residents possessions isn't enough to support their corrupt government.
Thank God that you're not in Maryland...
That's the second headline I've misread. I thought it was "Golden Silence on Statewide Trolls". Wishful thinking, I guess. Must have more coffee.
Maybe if our government would quit going around the world building and rebuilding everyone else's infrastructure, building medical clinics and hospitals, fighting everyone else's wars we could take care of our country's roads and other financial problems.
so how does the war in Iraq affect the finances of local State govt. in Virginia.
In my opinion, it does not unless you desire the federal govt. to bail out virginia or unless you think the federal govt should build all the local roads, etc.
News, federal money doesn't come from federal money. Federal money comes from citizens and the states. The feds give money back to the states every day. The feds need to quit taking so much money, then the states would have more money. Instead of calling it trickle down you could call it trickle back. People in their own states can keep their money and spend it locally.
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