Hopes for Va. transportation plan dim

RICHMOND, Va. (Map, News) -  Legislators quickly fell into familiar partisan squabbling on the first day of the special transportation session Monday and did not even begin to consider Gov. Tim Kaine’s $1.1 billion tax plan, dimming the already small possibility that any major compromise on road and transit funding will be reached in the coming days.

Kaine urged both bodies of the General Assembly to act quickly to approve new taxes to battle traffic congestion and prevent the state’s highways from falling into disrepair.

But he came under fire from Republicans who accused him of drawing lawmakers back to Richmond without reaching consensus on how to proceed from his own Democratic Party.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said Kaine had not done the necessary political legwork before presenting his tax plan to the legislature.

“I don’t believe he has laid the groundwork for this special session to be a success,” Griffith said on the House floor.

Republicans are focusing heavily on reviewing the performance of the Virginia Department of Transportation, despite its major improvements in on-time and on-budget performance, and want to put the agency through an external audit before approving new money.

Kaine attacked the proposed audit as a way to avoid addressing the funding problem.

“I think it’s a very transparent ploy to put a fig leaf over a desire to evade responsibility,” Kaine told reporters.

The governor’s plan would raise nearly $1.1 billion by 2014 through a statewide 1 percent tax increase on auto sales, a $10 annual increase to vehicle registrations and a 25-cent per $100 value increase on the tax on selling a home. Those would be accompanied by a 1 percent regional-based sales tax increase in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Of the money raised through Kaine’s proposal, $516 million a year would go toward highway maintenance by 2014.

A prominent House Democrat, Del. Brian Moran of Alexandria, has thrown his support behind Kaine. But the Senate’s Democratic majority, which is introducing its own transportation funding plan with a gas tax at its center, has been largely silent on the governor’s plan.

“I think there is consensus that we need to solve the transportation dilemma that we’re in ... we’re here to solve the problem, people come up with different ideas,” said Sen. Edward Houck, D-Spotsylvania.

House Republicans leaders are strongly opposed to both plans.

At the center of the debate is whether to approve broad, statewide taxes favored by the governor and Senate leadership, or just enough to replace the regional taxes the Virginia Supreme Court threw out in February from last year’s transportation package. The second idea appears to have far better prospects of passing the House.

Other legislators, who spoke at an anti-tax rally outside the capitol Monday morning, don’t want any increase at all.

Optimists for a successful session point to recent bipartisan accords this year and the last, including post-Virginia Tech tragedy mental health reforms and the 2007 omnibus transportation bill, which is now partly defunct, as evidence that all four caucuses of the General Assembly can work together.

wflook@dcexaminer.com

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