The policies of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell have more than a few contradictions.
A key one is his stubborn refusal to raise taxes while
he also deals with a state highway system that badly needs upgrading. Yet, it so short of money that funds for maintenance are routinely raided from construction funds.
Trying to reconcile this is Sean T. Connaughton, the former chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors, a former head of the U.S. Maritime Administration and now McDonnell’s Secretary
of Transportation.
Connaughton sat down with me last week for an interview that focused on how he expects to make stone soup for the state’s transportation sector with the state running a $4.4 billion budget deficit.
The former Coast Guard and Navy officer insists that he can be done. Money isn’t exactly the main problem, Connaughton told me. Of its $3.8 billion transportation budget, the state still puts about $1 billion a year into infrastructure. “But right now we have money for construction that isn’t moving through the pipeline. So we’re trying to understand why,” he says.
To find out, the McDonnell administration has launched a series of audits of the Virginia Department of Transportation. Besides that, Connaughton says he wants to find out why state and federal transportation planning often runs at cross ends and why it takes so
long to get an improvement completed.
One example is the plan for so-called “hot lanes” on Interstate 395 and 95 south of Washington which offer motorists expedited rush-hour access for extra fees. Conaughton complains that he was hearing about the project eight years ago when he was chairman of the Prince William board “and we still haven’t gotten to a comprehensive agreement.”
Another question mark involves federal money for higher-speed rail. Politicians and the state’s business elite had big plans to get a big chunk of the $8.5 billion offered for passenger rail by President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reconstruction Act. They dreamt of
fast passenger trains that would whisk them from downtown Richmond to
Washington in 90 minutes.
But this year, Virginia got a paltry $75 million while North Carolina got $545 million. One reason is that North Carolina has been working on higher speed rail much longer than the Old Dominion and has a more sophisticated program. And even though the two states have a
compact for cooperation on the issue, “they have never met about it,”
says Connaughton who planned to visit Raleigh to get things moving.
What’s more, Connaughton is a big fan of the Virginia Public Private Transportation Act which some claim leads the states in its sophistication. Public-private funding lets the state have its cake and eat it, too, by letting the private sector shoulder the financial burden
for new roads since the state has no available funds and is unwilling to
raise money through taxes.
McDonnell is fast-tracking a plan to build a public-private superhighway along U.S. 460 from Petersburg to Hampton Roads that would be completely private.”We believe with will have a (program) that will move this project forward that will not require any state or federal
financial involvement. They are consulting lawyers right now. We would have essentially a true private toll road,” Connaughton says.
Another scheme to get around revenue woes would be putting toll booths on the southern approaches to Interstates 85 and 95. There’s one big caveat, Connaughton acknowledges. Funds raised from those tollbooths can be used only for maintenance on those federal interstates. But doing so would take the maintenance burden off the state and could speed safety improvements in accident-prone areas of the interstates.
Will Connaughton’s schemes work? He is known for out-of-the-box solutions.
As chairman of the Prince William board, he pushed the county to start building and maintaining its own roads rather than having to deal with the state.
But relying on public-private partnerships doesn’t always work. The Pocahontas Parkway near Richmond was such a deal but demand for the toll road was so weak that the state came close to losing its pristine AAA bond rating, forcing the state to scramble for a new
deal.
There’s only so far Virginia can go without actually paying for its transportation needs.
Peter Galuszka