The House of Delegates is holding firm against unrelenting pressure to raise taxes that would perpetuate Virginia’s antiquated and wasteful transportation system. The House Finance Committee spiked plans to raise taxes locally in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to fund regional road building projects.
One plan did survive the legislative buzz saw: a $2.4 billion funding package that relied upon a $1.5 billion bond issue that would require voter approval. But journalistic accounts suggested that initiative would be dead on arrival when it moved to the Senate. Read the accounts here:
Richmond Times Dispatch
Washington Post
Virginian Pilot
One’s as good (or bad) as the other. All miss the larger point.
What’s been missing from almost all punditry and political reporting (with rare exceptions) is any sense of the larger issue: Having identified fundamental flaws in Virginia’s traditional transportation policy, the House has laid out a plan for the most sweeping overhaul of Virginia transportation since the Byrd era. These reforms would transform the way VDOT does business: accelerating outsourcing and privatization and delegating responsibility and funding for secondary roads to counties. Grasping the reality that certain patterns of land use generate more traffic congestion than others, the House also has submitted unprecedented proposals to re-shape land use.
Now, it’s one thing to disagree with these proposals and the premises underlying them. Many readers of this blog do that every day. (I don’t even know if I agree with all of the House’s recommendations.) But at least Bacon’s Rebellion readers pay the courtesy of actually engaging the ideas. Virginia’s pundits and political reporters have failed utterly and completely to acknowledge the issues at stake, much less to understand them. Complex pieces of legislation and the thinking behind them warrant one or two throw-away paragraphs buried deep in stories about legislative process. Rather than engage ideas, editorial writers stoop to simple invective and name-calling.
Transportation and land use are not arcane issues — they are all pervasive. They affect every Virginian! Where are the investigative pieces? Where are the in-depth series? Where are the historical backgrounders? What happened to the crusading spirit of Virginia journalism? When did Virginia’s leading newspapers become dogmatic defenders of the status quo? At what point did Virginia journalists become parrots of elite opinion and begin scoffing at the sentiments (as expressed in polls) of ordinary people?
I indict the newspaper profession in Virginia. It has betrayed its journalistic ideals. It has betrayed even its liberal ideals. If the publishers and executive editors of Virginian newspapers are capable of self reflection, this is the time for it.
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