Once again, Washington Post editorial writers have taken a cheap shot against Virginia’s General Assembly rather than bestir themselves to think about the issue under discussion. In making the case for the proposed Purple line, a mass transit line running parallel to the Capital Beltway in Maryland, the WaPo finds it necessary to make an invidious comparison with Virginia: “The state legislature, enslaved to anti-tax dogma, can’t seem to face the scale and urgency of the state’s transportation dilemma.”
Now, I would agree that a circumferential Metro line would offer tremendous benefits, just as the WaPo points out: “It would begin to compensate for Metrorail’s main deficiency — its radial design, which reflects planners’ flawed assumption that the District would forever be the lone focal point for the region’s development and job growth. Much of the economic boom in recent decades has taken place in or near suburban hubs ringing the city; naturally, traffic has followed.”
Underpinning the WaPo’s swipe at the General Assembly, however, are the assumptions that (a) it is the responsibility of the taxpayers to foot the bill for mass transit, regardless of costs and benefits, and that (b) only the dogmatic intransigence of downstate, low-tax zealots in the House of Delegates, who, by the way, don’t care a whit for Northern Virginia or understand its problems, stands in the way.
The WaPo editorial chooses not to explore the fact that public financing for a massive Metro expansion would represent an unconscionable transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the owners of land located near the Metro stations. Robbing the Poor and Giving to the Rich seems to be the new mantra of the Washington Post, except, of course, when it comes to federal income tax policy, when its editorial writers revert to class warfare mode. In either case, you can count on the Post to bash the Republicans.
As I outlined in detail in my column, “Rail Ripoff,” about the Rail-to-Dulles project, it is possible to craft a funding mechanism to support construction of heavy rail without dumping the entire cost onto the general public. The steps are these: (1) Create Community Development Authorities around the proposed Metro Stations to issue bonds that would pay for construction of the stations and rail line; (2) overlay the CDAs with special tax districts that tax the commercial property owners and create a revenue stream to pay off the bonds; and (3) allow property owners to build at greater densities, as needed, to provide them sufficient financial payback to make the whole arrangement worthwhile.
Let’s recapitulate: The WaPo would tax Joe Sixpack to build mass transit and further enrich wealthy property owners. By contrast, a CDA strategy would tap the increased property values created by mass transit to pay for its construction, yet structure a deal to create a win-win-win for everyone. Admittedly, House Republicans haven’t endorsed the CDA strategy, but, then, they’re not calling the Post names. Who’s more ignorant — the WaPo or Virginia legislators? Who’s more intransigent? Who is more blinded by ideological dogma?
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