House panel OKs bill for outside VDOT audit

Richmond (Map, News) -  A bill that would put the Virginia Department of Transportation through an independent audit and route the potential savings into highway maintenance passed two House committees Tuesday.

Other measures were delayed or killed in an increasingly deadlocked special session, convened Monday to find ways to raise money for the commonwealth’s network of roads, rails and bridges.

The audit measure cleared the House Transportation Committee unopposed and then the House Appropriations Committee on a 17-4 vote, signaling a degree of bipartisan support for the independent review of how VDOT spends its money.

The bill’s patron, Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodbridge, expected the audit to cost between $4 to $6 million. He said it would incorporate the state’s numerous prior reviews of the agency, but that it was nevertheless necessary to “bring in an outside set of eyes.”

“There are no self-butchering hogs,” he said.

The Kaine administration has appeared hostile to the concept of another VDOT audit, and on Monday the governor attacked it as a “transparent ploy” by lawmakers seeking to shirk responsibility to raise money for road construction and maintenance.

But Kaine’s transportation secretary, Pierce Homer, did not offer major opposition to the bill Tuesday, saying that “overall, we’re anxious for any kind of oversight and accountability.”

Kaine’s own $1.1 billion tax plan to close the state’s highway maintenance gap and raise new construction money was not considered Tuesday. Competing Senate proposals that include a gas tax favored by the chamber’s Democratic leaders are expected to be taken up today by the Senate Finance Committee. The governor’s plan does not include a levy on fuel.

Republican bills that would have used potential natural gas revenue from coastal drilling, should a federal moratorium be lifted, to fund transportation died early deaths in the Senate Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources Committee. The Democratic-controlled committee shot down the measures 8-5, with opposition based largely on environmental concerns.

A measure that would create a constitutional “lockbox” for transportation money cleared the House and Senate Privileges and Elections committees.

wflook@dcexaminer.com

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