I’m glad to be back blogging on BR! It’s a time consuming process, but I missed being away. Thank you Jim for inviting me to re-join the premier blog on VA politics.
A lot has been written about the GOP Transportation Compromise that squeaked through the State Senate on a 21 to 19 vote. Jim Bacon called it “Transportation Abomination.” I prefer referring to it as “Bill Howell’s Tax Increase,” but the discussion on taxes will have to come later.
In the meantime, I have yet to see any in-depth analysis of some of the provisions called for in this bill, particularly some legal issues that arise from this legislation and the manner in which it was packaged into one mammoth bill.
Article IV, Section 12 of the Virginia Constitution addresses the “Form of Laws.” It states:
No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title. Nor shall any law be revived or amended with reference to its title, but the act revived or the section amended shall be reenacted and published at length.
Speaker Bill Howell, the patron of HB3202, has tried to explain away this requirement by saying that its single object is “congestion mitigation.” But the Constitution requires that the one object behind the bill be expressed in its title.
The title of HB 3202 has nothing to do with congestion mitigation—it doesn’t even mention the word congestion. The bill’s title is: “Transportation funding; authority to certain localities to impose additional fees therefor [sic], report.”
So what is the single object that this bill embraces? There are so many parts to this bill one is hard pressed to summarize them all. It purports to do a little of everything, such as raising taxes, promoting an efficiency study, calling for economic development, increasing traffic fines, granting new taxing authorities to localities, and the list goes on…
I don’t mean to be presumptuous or give Gov. Kaine any ideas, but the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) is trying to make an issue if the Governor amends or vetoes the transportation compromise bill. Instead, all Gov. Kaine has to do, is return the bill back to the legislature since it fails to meet the single object rule as required by our Constitution. That will deflate the PRV’s bubble and will expose Bill Howell’s Tax Increase for what it really is—an abomination!
In any case, even if the governor does not read the BR blog, I’m certain that certain patriots are standing in the wings and plan to challenge the constitutionality of this bill in the courts. It is indeed mind-boggling, that Virginia’s law and order party consistently manages to come up with bills that are designed to evade or outright ignore basic legal and constitutional requirements.
More on additional legal issues with this bill in my next post.