quotes Del. David Albo, R-Springfield, with this plaintiff cry: “It’s like people are trying to come up with a million different reasons to oppose the bill so it will die.”
The General Assembly transportation package may well meet its death through a thousand small cuts — many of which have been expounded upon by Bacon’s Rebellion contributors and readers. But there’s one big reason… a guillotine of a reason… for opposing the bill: It doesn’t move Virginia any closer to a user pays system.
First there is the economic argument against HB 3202: If you give something away for free, people will want more of it. If you sever the connection between the cost of building and maintaining roads and the people who drive on them, you will get more people driving farther on roads. In other words, you will make worse the very problem — traffic congestion — that you purport to solve.
Then there is the moral argument against the bill: Why should citizens who drive less be compelled to subsidize those who drive more? Why should citizens who engage in socially virtuous behavior — walking, bicycling, car pooling, telecommuting or riding the bus — be bilked to pay for those whose behavior is socially burdensome? All of the road-funding plans in play would punish the saints, reward the sinners and change no one’s behavior for the better.
One of the arguments I hear against the gasoline tax, a quasi-user fee, is that it would “hurt those who can least afford it.” Oh… So, Joe Sixpack cannot afford to pay a highly visible 10 cents a gallon when he fills his pump, but he can afford to pay a host of penalties, fees and taxes that either affect him directly or indirectly?
Let’s examine that proposition more closely. If Joe Sixpack pays at the pump, at least he has the option of altering his behavior to pay less of the tax. If he chooses, maybe he can ride the bus or carpool with a buddy — saving money and relieving congestion in doing so. By contrast, when the taxes, fees and levies are so diffused and embedded in the general cost structure of the economy, there is no evading them, no incentive to change behavior, and no congestion relief.
Until our lawmakers confront this basic reality, the entire conversation about transportation in Virginia — on both sides of the partisan aisle — is intellectually bankrupt.