Bacon's Rebellion

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Kaine Submits Transportation Amendments

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by

James A. Bacon
in

I’ve received an e-mailed copy of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s press release (compliments of Barnie Day) outlining the details of his amendments to the GOP transportation package. It’s not live on the Governor’s Web page yet, so I’ll post it on the Bacon’s Rebellion website and link to it for your reading pleasure.

I haven’t had a chance to dissect the Governor’s amendments yet, but I’ll return with comments when I can.

…OK, I’m back. Here’s my insta-analysis before I have to run off to an interview and Little League.

First of all, I’m confused. Kaine seemingly has back-tracked on two of the Democrats’ key rhetorical themes of the past few months. If I am missing something obvious, would someone please point it out to me?

Question One: Gov. Kaine has excoriated Republicans for wanting to finance transportation projects with General Fund revenues, including one half of the ongoing budget surplus. Transportation, he said, should not have to compete with other needs such as schools, health care and law enforcement, and he didn’t think the surplus, which can increase or contract dramatically, was a stable, ongoing source of revenue. So, now he proposes to increase reliance on the budget surplus, tapping two-thirds of the surplus? The inconsistency is so jarring that I must be missing something critical. If someone can enlighten me, please post a comment.

Question Two: Waving credit cards mockingly in the air earlier this year, Democratic legislators lambasted the Republican plan for “mortgaging our children’s future,” “putting state debts on the credit card,” and all manner of fiscal irresponsibility. Now comes Gov. Kaine, proposing to jack up transportation debt from the $2.5 billion the GOP legislators proposed to $3 billion. Again, a jaw-slapping inconsistency. Am I missing something?

So much for Return on Investment Analysis. Gov. Kaine never made a big point of this, so I can’t accuse him of inconsistency. I just don’t agree. He proposes increasing the percentage of bonds going to transit capital from 15.7 percent to 20 percent, and he wants to dedicate two cents of existing recordation taxes to transit funding. I’ve got nothing against transit — I just think it should compete on a level playing field with roads. All projects should be ranked on a Return on Investment basis. Anything that arbitrarily increases or restricts funding for a major transportation category is a sure-fire recipe for making sure that higher Return on Investment projects get overlooked.

Land use and traffic flow. There are shreds of good news. The Governor has signed side legislation (not part of the infamous HB 3202) that will accomplish a number of worthy goals:

  • Subdivision roads. SB 1181 strengthens standards for accepting subdivision streets into the state system by increasing connectivity standards for roads and subdivisions, enhancing the overall capacity and efficiency of the transportation network.
  • Corridor management. HB 2228/SB 1312 promotes traffic flow and interconnectivity on the state’s road system, ensuring that new and existing roadways are not degraded by the creation of too many and poorly spaced intersections, turn lanes, median breaks, and other impediments.
  • Incident management. HB 2163/SB 1144 allows VDOT vehicles to participate in clearing cars and restoring traffic flow after an accident, improving clearance time.

The press release provides only a cursory summary of very detailed legislation, so the significance of many of the Governor’s amendments is not immediately evident. I await more details.

The Governor’s press release is now online. Here it is.

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13 responses to “Kaine Submits Transportation Amendments”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Actually they are not that dramatic, and it will be hard to justify voting no on most of them if you voted yes on the original package.

    He puts the diesel tax hike back in statewide, and makes the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads packages much more uniform in their mix of new taxes and fees — so what is imposed in one region can also be imposed in the other. The lack of uniformity was a glaring problem just begging for an equal protection claim.

    He grants much wider impact fee authority to far more localities. But of course, no statewide motor fuels tax — so the price of commuting will stay the same, while the price of the house in the ‘burbs will continue to skyrocket…seems to make more sense to me to tax the commuting itself, not the house….

    The reaction will be interesting, but it will be impossible to argue he offered a dramatic or radical rewrite (of what was admittedly an awful plan to start with.)

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Tis the season for whining about real estate values and assessments, and the flood of coverage inthe Times Dispatch is actually going on elsewhere. But in all of it I’ve seen little discussion of the role impact fees and proffers have played in driving up prices, even the prices of existing houses which didn’t pay the fees at construction, but now have their value set by the marketplace.

  3. nova_middle_man Avatar
    nova_middle_man

    The bellweather to watch is the general fund revenues

    Although considering the final bill only was talking about 64 million that might not even generate much debate

    All in all its pretty anti-climatic

    The death penalty vetos will generate more coverage

  4. badrose Avatar
    badrose

    I can’t believe Kaine actually said, “lockbox!”

  5. rbrandt Avatar
    rbrandt

    I was confused by the ‘2/3 of the surplus is reserved for transportation’? Arn’t we talking about a lot more than $185 Mil a year here? The surplus was over $400 Mil last I heard. Wouldn’t this kill any chance of Kaine creating universal pre school?

  6. Roll Tide Avatar
    Roll Tide

    Mr. Bacon,

    Governor Kaine never said not to use the surplus; he even submitted a plan that did that. What he said was not to tie bonds to the surplus because it may not be stable from year to year. He proposing to use the surplus as additional money to address on-going transportation needs that may vary, not to pay bonds.

    Yes, using debt to build roads that should be done with user fees (gas taxes) is not ideal, but the Governor is proposing to back the bonds with a dedicated revenue source (auto insurance premiums) rather than general fund money overall. While this may not make the ‘starve the beast’ segment overjoyed, it will ensure that everything else will not have to compete with the bonds for roads.

    One thing to note that as said before, maintenance is eating up the construction budget to the extent that Virginia leaves significant federal construction dollars ‘on the table’ because it cannot match them with state resources. Under the plan, the bonds will go first to match federal dollars, then to address local needs. In addition, part of the recordation tax will go to maintenance to take the pressure off of the construction budget.

    Again, two “pots”: bonds backed by auto insurance premiums to match federal dollars for construction; surplus plus fees and taxes that produce a fairly constant revenue stream that were included in the original bill to fund transit, maintenance, and additional construction projects.

  7. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Everyone is going to declare victory and then retreat.

  8. nova_middle_man Avatar
    nova_middle_man

    It’s an election bandaid

    The underlying problems of disjointed settlement patterns will continue and my generation will have to deal with it in 2028 I guess

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I’m impressed.

    One of the paths that Kaine did not take was that of political opportunity where he could have conceivably used high-profile counter proposals against key Republican aspects of the budget.

    I’m impressed also with the “tweaking” which I feel was not minor but still consistent with the overall framework.

    For instance, the two Regional plans were termed “dead on arrival” and the “tweaking” apparently defused the objections and made them more acceptable by building in some flexibility in how to raise revenues.

    In short, NoVa and HR/TW were offered not only different ways to raise money but different ways to use it and the ability to keep it all in their respective Regions.

    He helped RoVa by removing the words that restricted money from being spend on secondary roads.

    And he essentially found specific categories of revenues in the General Fund to .. dedicate to transportation. In essence, he added new dedicated revenues sources to the transportation budget.

    So – the “tweaks” are much, much more than a minor enginee tune-up – as was billed and expected by many.

    So – no big fall election confrontation – at least not over this particular transportation bill but fair to point out that the total amount of non-Regional money is small… and I suspect much or most of it eaten up in maintenance and dedicated to “match” Fed dollars that we won’t get without a “match”.

    What is left over after that – I suspect is chump change.

    For instance, places like Fredericksburg – fast growing, with major congestion – not recognized as a “region” will be left to fend for themselves pretty much – as far as I can understand.

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I think the 10-year projection on the surplus is $64 million annually.
    So even though it’s at a high figure right now, they’re working with lower estimates.

  11. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Hmmm…

    It seems like Kaine may have done the first useful thing during his term in office.

    Some local, some general funds, some more debt.

    At least we’removing forward.

  12. Kristina Avatar
    Kristina

    It is what is. No one wants to be the one to ruin the transportation legislation because everyone recognizes the great need to improve our infrastructure. This is not an issue for grandstanding, rather a time to move forward.

  13. eileen Avatar
    eileen

    Identical to HB3202, Kaine’s original plan called for not only the same one-time GF ($500 million) of surplus, but also 50% of non-recurring GF surplus, which translates to between $64 and $67 million per year. Kaine’s amendments bumped that GF surplus to 2/3%, which according to my math equals $88 million per year. It’s a difference of between $21 and $24 million – a reasonable compromise IMHO by Kaine and hardly one you could call a jarring inconsistency.

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