Here’s a terrifying idea: Make the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project cheaper to finance by letting the Commonwealth of Virginia issue its bonds. With its AAA credit rating, the commonwealth recently paid 4% interest rates on transportation bonds that it issued earlier this year. That’s a lot cheaper than the 7% to 7.5% the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) would pay with its BBB rating.

Issuing state bonds would save hundreds of million of dollars in interest payments and significantly reduce the money that would have to be raised from travelers along the Dulles Toll Road, argues John B. Wood, CEO of Telos Corporation in Ashburn and chairman of Loudoun County’s economic development commission. (Read his column in Leesburg Today.) “While Virginia does not have a legal obligation to back the MWAA’s bonds for rail development, it does have a moral obligation to do so-which in some ways is stronger.”

Just one little problem. Issuing some $3 billion in bonds to pay for Rail-to-Dulles, a regional project, would crowd out Virginia’s ability to issue bonds for statewide priorities — schools, higher ed, parks, general transportation — without jeopardizing that very same AAA credit rating. We’re skating pretty close to our maximum borrowing capacity as it is.

As for the state’s “moral obligation” to the project, my reaction is, “What moral obligation?” The question is very simple: Who pays for Rail-to-Dulles? The parties that benefit directly from the heavy rail line or the general public? Before we put the citizens of the commonwealth on the hook for the project, let’s (1) re-think the $300 million decision to build an underground station at Dulles airport, (2) drop the requirement for a union workforce, which potentially could cost another $300 million, (3) slap tolls on the toll-free Dulles Access Road, (4) get MWAA to pony up its fair share of the project, and (5) extract a reasonable share of the value created for property owners whose is located adjacent to the proposed Metro stops.

If the parties that benefit the most from Rail-to-Dulles aren’t willing to curtail their appetites and pay for the project, how dare they assert that anyone else has a “moral authority” to pay for it?