NVTA train wreck
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Alfred Biddlecomb
Published: March 5, 2008
Now with less than a week to go in a legislative session that requires members of the House and Senate to hammer out a $78 billion budget, lawmakers face the prospect of either raising taxes or passing the buck on the General Assembly’s constitutional responsibility of funding the commonwealth’s transportation infrastructure.
It’s not a pretty picture, but we got what we paid for.
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the heart of the General Assembly’s highway funding plan from last year is unconstitutional. More specifically, the unelected and unaccountable Northern Virginia Transportation Authority cannot levy taxes to pay for regional highway and transit projects. That’s the General Assembly’s job. And it’s a job most lawmakers don’t want.
Personally, I’m making out like a bandit. With no taxing authority, the NVTA cannot charge me an extra $10 when I take my car to get it inspected this month. That’s $10 I can spend on beer and the lottery.
Since I’m also planning to put my house on the market next month and with the NVTA unable to extract a Congestion Relief Fee (Grantor’s Tax) on home sales, I’ll save about $1,350 if my town house sells. Maybe I’ll use that money to buy a 42-inch LCD flat screen television. The kids’ college fund can wait. This is “found money” and you’ve got to let it ride.
Add in a few other discontinued taxes and fees and the Supreme Court will have saved me around $1,500.
Then again, why should I credit the state Supreme Court when Gov. Tim Kaine and the General Assembly deserve all the accolades. It was our friends down at Capitol Square who feared taxes so much that they devised such a complicated scheme of taxes and fees to be collected by second and third hand parties.
Now it’s back to the drawing board for the legislature. Failure to act will jeopardize $1.1 billion in annual highway funds that represented the first major transportation investment in more than two decades.
Where there is adversity, there is always opportunity. Sen. Charles Colgan said it best when the court decision was handed down last week.
Colgan said the General Assembly must finish its work this week and return to Richmond later this spring for a special session on transportation.
Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax, took little time to come up with the obvious solution — a 5 cent increase in the state gasoline tax. That drew quick opposition from House Republicans who refuse to increase taxes to build and maintain roads. A new plan being passed around the House relies on the local governments within the NVTA approving the taxes and fees that were struck down by the Supreme Court. It’s another case of passing the buck.
Relying on local governments to tax themselves is no easy task when jurisdictions like Prince William and Manassas are having a rough time raising funds to pay for schools, infrastructure and law enforcement.
How long can Prince William County continue to build roads while lawmakers dither in Richmond? While a 5-cent tax on gasoline sounds horrible to most, it certainly makes more sense than the nickel and dime approach that was being carried out by the NVTA.
It taxes those who drive. It’s that simple.
Everyone who uses the roads will pay. I’ll pay the gasoline tax every day I drive to work. Tourists from Iowa will pay it as will those who are in the country illegally. Those unwilling to pay the tax, can choose not to drive or to drive less.
The gasoline tax makes sense because it’s taken from me at the pump instead of at the DMV, Jiffy Lube, Avis and Re/Max.
The only problem with the gasoline tax is that it requires approval from the General Assembly. Based on last year’s actions, our lawmakers seem to put more effort in hiding behind regional commissions and local governments than actually stepping up and solving the problem themselves.
That’s how it was in 2000 when Gov. Jim Gilmore proposed using money from the commonwealth’s share of the tobacco settlement to fund transportation. Gov. Mark Warner and the General Assembly ducked the issue a few years later when Northern Virginians faced a referendum to raise a sales tax to create road funds.
Last year’s transportation scheme was more of the same and it will probably take two more years to come up with yet another plan that taxes Virginians without actually calling it a tax.
Alfred Biddlecomb is the former Opinion Page editor for the Potomac News and Manassas Journal Messenger.
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