In the place of offering any constructive proposals for addressing Virginia’s transportation problems, the Washington Post editorial writers insist upon playing the anti-RoVa card. Here is the lede of today’s editorial:
After all the fuss and shouting about a grand statewide transportation funding plan, here is what the legislative powers in Richmond have decided to pay for each year to relieve the beleaguered commuters of Northern Virginia: half of one highway interchange, or the equivalent thereof.
As for any further improvements to Northern Virginia’s jammed roadways, the legislature has said the region is welcome to tax itself.
Despite “Republican propaganda” of raising $1.5 billion a year to spend on roads under the legislative package it crafted, the Post opines, the state would send Northern Virginia only $54 million for new road construction a year. The bulk of the new funds for the region would come from taxes that Northern Virginia imposes on itself. Says the WaPo: Gov. Timothy M. Kaine needs to amend the bill, insisting upon a “more robust state funding component so that the burden of improving Northern Virginia’s transportation network does not fall so overwhelmingly on the region itself. “
Somehow, in the WaPo mythology, the inequitable allocation of transportation dollars is all the fault of evil Republicans. Time for a reality check: The allocation of state transportation dollars is determined by a complex formula that was last updated (as memory serves, please correct me if I’m wrong) in 1986 as part of Gov. Gerald L. Baliles’ overhaul of Virginia’s transportation funding. The legislature back then was controlled by Democrats. Baliles was (and is) a Democrat. Back in 1986, before two intervening censuses and redistrictings, the General Assembly had more rural representation than it does now. The allocation formula was designed, in large measure, to protect rural interests.
The GOP Compromise would circumvent the state transportation funding formula: The estimated $400 million raised by Northern Virginia taxpayers for a regional transportation authority would all stay in Northern Virginia. Greedy downstate leeches would get none of it.
If the Washington Post pundits could rise above its Manichean worldview that casts downstate and conservative Republicans as the source of all evil , they might realize that the GOP package is probably the best deal that NoVa can get. The only alternatives are (1) to funnel new taxes through the old transportation funding formula, in which case NoVa would get hosed, or (2) turn the distribution of funds into a wide-open pork-fest where money flows into districts whose representatives have the most political clout — in which case NoVa would get hosed.
If the WaPo editorialistas were interested in getting more money for NoVa rather than blindly flaying its partisan antagonists, they would support the GOP package. If that were too bitter a pill to swallow, they would recommend restructuring the state transportation funding formula to be more favorable to urban/suburban interests.
Of course, in the absence of Fundamental Change, dumping more money into Northern Virginia road and transit projects won’t help congestion relief. The GOP plan is gravely flawed, though not for reasons comprehensible to the Washington Post. But expecting the WaPo to achieve that level of understanding is like teaching quantum physics to an algebra drop-out. For right now, I would be grateful if the WaPo pundits would simply grasp the most basic facts of Virginia government instead of spewing nonsense.
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