Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

A Waste of Time

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Today’s newspaper accounts of the transportation special session are pretty pessimistic. After the first day, some have concluded, the whole exercise is shaping up a waste of time.

Assuming the session collapses in a frazzled heap, it will be followed by the inevitable assignation of blame. Regarding the doling out of responsibility, Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier, made a good point yesterday following Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s address to the legislature.

Unlike the special sessions called by Governor Baliles to address transportation, or by Governor Allen to abolish parole, or by Governor Gilmore to reduce the car tax, Governor Kaine has failed to build consensus or support for his plan before calling legislators back to Richmond.

During the six weeks since Governor Kaine unveiled the tax increase plan he detailed for you moments ago, he has held town meetings across Virginia to gain support for his approach. That strategy has not met with success, and there is no indication that the people of Virginia support his proposal.

Good point. Kaine called the special session. He called it knowing that he didn’t even have buy-in either from the Republicans or from key players in his own party. Then he traveled around the state and tried to sell it to the public in the hope, presumably, of pressuring legislators to adopt his plan. But the public, it appears, is as fractured as the readers who leave comments on the Bacon’s Rebellion blog. Kaine’s gambit failed. Now everyone who has convened in Richmond is simply going through the motions of getting something done.

Not that I blame Kaine for failing to forge a consensus. Given the level of public sentiment right now, a consensus is unforgeable. The Republicans came close with HB 3202 last year, but it turns out that key measures were… oops… unconstitutional.

Ultimately, the problem boils down to this: Everybody wants more roads and rail, but everyone wants someone else to pay for it. Trouble is, if people want someone else to pay for their transportation improvements, they sure as hell won’t go along with paying for someone else’s! The only way this political gridlock can be solved is to convince people they’re getting something tangible for what they pay (either in taxes or tolls). Politically, nothing else will sell.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Jim,

    I disgree with the conclusion that people want “someone else to pay.” I think most people belive they are paying plenty, but that the money is being misappropriated. There is simply a complete lack of trust in government. We are paying for roads, but the GA has not made transportation a priority for a decade. Now there is a “crisis.”

    The revenue is there, but now they have to reallocate it. They won’t do it, so we have “gridlock.”

  2. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Jim:

    Why would you expect consesus in a state that is really three to five different states? Deadlock is inevitable.

    Beyond that – nobody knows who is paying for what in the state of Virginia. But everybody thinks they are paying too much. The institutional dishonesty of the GA is catching up with it. Tim Kaine will not stand for re-election. The members of the GA will. It’s time for a change.

    And … let’s say that the “special session” ends in deadlock. What then? I’ve said that it will take a crisis to get real change. This may be it. It’s time to take power away from the General Assembly and Governor and give it to the localities. So that the multiple regions that make up Virginia can set their own priorities.

  3. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    Sorry Groveton, we trust the locals less than the GA. As for regional priorities, thats the no man’s land here in Tidewater.

  4. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    What happens if the GA ends in a deadlock?

    Well..Darrell and HR/TW will have to figure out if “nothing” at the regional and local level is acceptable.

    Ditto for NoVa.

    It is striking to me though the difference in attitudes as NoVa, in general seems to support Regional approaches to transportation issues and HR/TW does not.

    If Groveton’s attitude is representative of NoVa – they just want the GA to leave them alone and stop siphoning off tax money and let them tax themselves to get the things they want…

    … whereas bloggers here from TW/HR leave the impression that they are much happier paying taxes to the state and letting VDOT handle the roads.

    ..the only problem is – there is no more state money for roads so HR/TR are really out of luck if the GA can’t agree on a State-level solution to transportation issues.

    I think the disparities between NoVa, HR/TW and RoVa illustrate the difficulties with the GA agreeing on a State strategy for transportation.

    But I know that Fredericksburg, Charlottesville and Richmond all would like the same deal (whatever that deal is) that NoVa gets if it means the ability to raise more funds for transportation on a regional basis.

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    While Darrell and I are from opposite ends of the state, I’m with him. I trust the GA more than I do the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the regional boards of developers’ wh_res.

    Long live the Dillon Rule!

    TMT

  6. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    Well no Larry, you got it all wrong. We here in Tidewater don’t want to pay for state projects (which is already a loss we have come to accept), and then pay for more state projects under the guise of regionalism.

    The powers that be were the ones to pick the projects, not the people. Even the FHWA has criticized their lack of public input. So the best way to keep the powerful powerless is to Just Say No. It’s not anti-tax, as the business elite claim, it’s a revolt to backdoor politics.

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    There is a process to de-certify an MPO ..and even if it fails -it is a powerful indicator of citizen sentiment that can force changes.

    but putting that aside –

    what do citizens want – and how would that be reflected in the current GA session?

    Phil Hamilton is pursuing concessions and tolls and Bill Howell seems to support that idea.

    Is that approach supported by HR/TW citizens – and if not, what do they want done?

  8. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    It’s not a question of concessions and tolls. The issue is spending thirty years of transportation funds to create more bottlenecks, leaving no money for anything else.

    The third crossing is open water, vulnerable to high winds, and places a major intersection far out into the bay with no avenue of escape. Meanwhile existing bottlenecks like the death trap at I64/I264 aren’t addressed at all. Even an expansion of the HRBT wasn’t on the list until the politicians recently used it as a carrot to get what they want.

    The main deal buster has always been the third crossing because once funding is approved for that multi-billion dollar project, there will never be any money available to address the issues that concern citizens the most. The midtown tunnel, do it. 460 to Petersburg and 64 expansion, do it. HRBT, sure.

    The SEP design is obsolete because growth in Chesapeake has moved too far south. Also the SEP creates another major bottleneck with the 168. In fact where they want to put the intersection, it would create a three mile parking lot all the way to I64/464, another bottleneck.

    Add to all this is the day when port deliveries by truck will come to an end. The whole point of the third crossing is to provide access to more trucks. As we are witnessing, trucks are becoming too expensive to operate. Many firms are going out of business. The state needs to be looking at alternatives for port operations, not making decisions based upon now invalid data.

  9. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Darrell –

    I am lost. Your excellent post of 8:40 AM provides a good summary of local transportation issues affecting Tidewater. How would you expect a Delegate or Senator from NoVA to ever understand those issues at an appropriate level? These people don’t even work full time. In fact, they are very part time. There is no chance they will ever make good decisions at the level you describe. Only full time, local politicans will ever understand these matters at an appropriate level. I understand that the current local politicians are untrustworthy. But this is a vicious circle. Because they are subordinate to the state, few people care, because few people care they don’t throw the bums out, becuase the bums don’t get thrown out they create distrust, because nobody trusts them they don’t get any power, etc etc.

    My point is a governance point not a preferance point. The governance approach of an all knowing, all powerful, part time state legislature is antiquated. Even if we elected competent people they still wouldn’t be able to do the job properly. However, if we elected competent people at the local level (and they worked full time) I think they could do the job. It’s not about one being good and one one being bad – they both are bad. But the local option has a chance of working. The all powerful state legislature has no chance.

    Now … watch these bozos pull off a decent transportation plan and prove me wrong…

  10. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Darrell’s post was very helpful for me to better understand HR/TW citizens and I can see what the problem is.

    I was pretty shocked to see some of the items that caused the MPO to fail the certification review.

    It appears that the business interests have essentially a choke-hold on transportation funding and decision-making.

  11. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    A governance point of view… heh.. Ok…

    We have an entire state executive branch whose purpose is to develop and manage the budgetary items that are presented to the GA by the governor. A part of that is to ensure that projects are viable in the first place IAW state and federal guidelines. Yet for a decade or more our MPO presented a transportation plan to the state that not only did not meet financial constraint rules, it reduced priority of feasible projects and replaced them with ones from their own agenda. VDOT, Reform, Audit. Remember that? The RPV should, it was part of their election platform.

    The feds finally got tired of the charade and forced the state to remove the HR package and others. Those secret CAO city manager meetings that were in the MPO certification review that Larry mentioned were part of that process. Thanks to the local GA cronies, those projects were later arisen along with the HRTA. And trust for all politicians went further down the toilet because of it, along with the GOP majority. As the last election has shown, political nobodies are giving the insiders a run for their money. It’s a shame because much of this could have been avoided.

    If it hadn’t been for the MPO all or nothing approach, many of these projects like the Midtown tunnel would likely already be funded and under construction. More importantly, there would have been one less reason for the GA GOP to ‘creatively’ destroy their party with unconstitutional funding schemes. Now when we hear MPO’s tired refrain of my way or the highway, the citizens instinctively vote for None of the Above.

  12. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Unfortunately even though MPOs have been around for at least a decade, most citizens don’t even know that they exist or what they do.

    They have no idea that this is where important and momentous transportation decisions are made.

    and by the time they find out about decisions, they are often years old.

    However, MPOs have several requirements that are opportunities for citizens to challenge the way they do business.

    One is the fact that the Feds REQUIRE each MPO to have financially-constrained build plan and long-range plan.

    Simply stated – it means the Hampton Roads MPO cannot have more projects on it’s long-term plan than it has identified funding for.

    So – it cannot have all the projects on it’s list that it has -which is often a subterfuge for telling citizens that all these projects are “in the plan” when in reality – they are only going to fund one of them.

    The law requires them to take off the constrained list – any projects that they cannot fund.

    This means the citizens are going to know what they are up to.

    What the FHWA certification review showed – among other things like they had no honest public participation process – was that they had no Constrained Plan – which is a fundamental requirement for MPOs.

    The citizens in Hampton Roads now have an opportunity to shake up their MPO and make it function more the way the law intended.

    I hope they do.

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