Transportation pact expected to remove election issue

by Heather B. Hayes and Jessica Sabbath
for Virginia Business
May 2007

With the transportation battle settled, what are Virginia’s political parties going to use as political ammunition in the November elections?

In a dramatic about-face from a year ago, the GOP-controlled General Assembly and Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine reached a compromise last month to infuse an additional $1 billion a year into the state’s transportation network. Republicans and Democrats had threatened to use the standoff on transportation funding against their opponents in the November elections, when all 140 delegate and senate seats will be up for election.

Now both sides can take political credit for seeking compromise.

But while the plan provides the first influx of cash for transportation since 1986, it falls short of the estimated $108 billion of unfunded transportation needs between 2005 and 2025, as predicted by the VTrans 2025 Multimodal Long-Range Transportation Study.

Still the compromise is a breakthrough for a legislature that met for 246 days last year without finding a solution. “This is the first significant infusion of resources for transportation in 21 years,” says Kevin Hall, Kaine’s spokesman.

“It gives officials in two economically vital regions some important new tools to raise resources locally to send on to local transportation priorities.”

The regional plans are far from a done deal, however. Six out of nine Northern Virginia and seven out of 12 Hampton Roads localities must agree to seven taxes and fees to create regional authorities, which would raise about $400 million and $200 million, respectively. But rather than requiring each governing board’s vote, Kaine’s amendments mean a vote from only one local representative on the regional authority will be needed to impose the taxes, allowing many local officials to avoid political damage from voting for tax increases.

However, the leaders couldn’t agree on how to curb public indoor smoking.
Kaine failed to persuade the General Assembly to support a smoking ban in restaurants. Without the amendments, Kaine vetoed the original bill. It would have required “smoking permitted” signs for restaurants allowing smoking, but also would have eliminated the requirement that restaurants serving more than 50 people have nonsmoking sections.

Henrico County-based Philip Morris USA, the country’s largest cigarette manufacturer, lobbied against Kaine’s proposal, but it supports restricting smoking sections in restaurants to the area around the bar.