It looks like we have more than a misunderstanding on our hands: GOP legislators and the Kaine administration are spoiling for a fight. The Free Lance-Star and Examiner.com have the latest details (slightly updated from our account Tuesday) on the disposition of $180 million set aside for transportation projects this year.
Here’s how the debate stands: GOPpers are outraged that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would remove the desperately needed transportation funds from the budget. Kainiacs respond that the roads aren’t ready to build yet, and the funds will be restored in 2010 when the projects are ready to proceed. GOPpers retort that Kaine’s 2010 revenue forecasts are too optimistic and the money may not be there when 2010 rolls around — but Kaine will be gone, and it will be someone else’s problem.
Bacon’s bottom line: That’s what you get when you fund transportation projects out of the General Fund. That’s why we need a segregated funding source for transportation (based on user-pays principles) and there needs to be a constitutional lockbox to prevent this kind of monkeying around.
Question of the day: What ever happened to the constitutional lockbox for the Transportation Trust Fund? Apparently, it died a poor orphan child in some Senate subcommittee. If the lockbox was so important during Tim Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign, why hasn’t the Governor resurrected it? If transportation funding is so sacred, why haven’t House Republicans reintroduced the lockbox legislation?
(Photo credit: Freeslideshow.com.)