House Republicans have declared Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s transportation-funding plan to be Dead on Arrival. As Jeff Schapiro and Jim Nolan report the story for the Times-Dispatch:
They said they have only to decide how to kill it — “whether we send it into a conference or if we just go home,” said House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem.
“I don’t think you’re going to see the governor’s plan succeed or anything close to it,” Griffith said.
Griffith and Del. M. Kirkland Cox of Colonial Heights, the chief House Republican whip, declared the economy in recession, adding that Kaine’s proposed new taxes — on among other things, motor vehicles and real estate sales — would only slow recovery.
“It’s tax, tax and more tax,” Griffith said.
I’m glad to hear it. I didn’t have anything good to say about the plan either. (See “There Is No Health In Us.“) But here’s my question for Republicans: If you don’t like the plan, what do you propose in its place?
Kaine appeared to adopt key elements of the plan — a motor vehicle sales tax, a vehicle registration fee and a grantor’s tax — because House Republicans embraced them last year when they crafted HB 3202, although not in precisely the same configuration. In his naivite, the governor no doubt assumed that if GOP legislators liked those levies last year, they would be OK with them this year. So, how did those charges become so unpalatable all of a sudden? It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that they are just opposed to anything that Kaine might propose.
Here’s what we need from Virginia Republicans: a set of clearly enunciated principles to guide transportation funding. Such principles need to do a number of things. They must:
(1) Create a mechanism for actually raising money. We can’t build a transportation system for the 21st century with fiscal tricks and legerdemain.
(2) Be sustainable over time, and they need to be structured so that legislators can’t lay their hands on the tax money for other purposes.
(3) Display a direct and transparent nexus between who pays and who benefits from transportation projects.
(4) Address the “demand” side of the transportation equation, in other words, incentivize people to seek alternative means of mobility and access.
(5) Incentivize citizens and developers to adopt more transportation-efficient human settlement patterns.
I’ve shown how it is possible to raise billions of dollars to pay for new transportation projects while adhering to these principles. (See “User Pays.”) From what I can tell, those musings have evoked zero interest among Republicans, who, judging by their rhetoric, should be inclined to spending restraints and free market principles. But, unless Republicans can devise a message more positive than “Just say no to taxes,” they are signing their electoral death warrant. Virginians may not trust the politicians to spend their tax money fairly and wisely, but they are looking for solutions.