General Assembly recesses with road gridlock

BY JEFF E. SCHAPIRO
AND OLYMPIA MEOLA
Media General News Service
Published: June 27, 2008

Waiting for Virginia lawmakers to kill new taxes for roads is like watching a car crash in slow motion.

The General Assembly yesterday recessed its special session, delaying a final vote on, and the expected defeat of, higher fuel taxes until lawmakers return to Richmond on July 9.

That is likely to signal the close of the latest partisan standoff over transportation financing.

But Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, thwarted again by anti-tax Republicans who dominate the House of Delegates, said that he might try once more in 2009.

“We’re going to be talking about transportation one way or another until we solve it,” Kaine, a Democrat, said about four hours after his tax- and fee-fattened fix died in a House committee. “Our citizens are demanding it.”

The House Rules Committee sent a Senate bill raising the gasoline tax 6 cents per gallon over six years to the full House in a GOP effort to spotlight divisions among Democrats over how to close a $1 billion hole in the highway-and-transit program.

Senate Democrats favor higher fuel taxes; House Democrats, a statewide sales-tax increase. Kaine pushed higher taxes on sales of motor vehicles and real estate, with new sales taxes for projects in traffic-clogged Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

In the approaching House floor vote, Democrats could join Republicans in defeating the fuel-tax increase, closing for the third time in three years the contentious debate over transportation.

“The one area of [the] bill that gives us problem is the gasoline tax,” said House Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong, D-Henry.

Though legislators in both parties warned that nothing would be accomplished, the General Assembly — called back by Kaine — returned on Monday for a special session to repair a hard-fought 2007 transportation package gutted by the courts and rejected, in part, by Virginians.

In February, the Virginia Supreme Court threw out as illegal taxation without representation a provision allowing unelected authorities to impose taxes in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to support $500 million in bond-backed transportation projects.

A month earlier, legislators lopped an additional $65 million from the plan by removing bad-driver fees that had angered voters because they applied only to in-state motorists.

On his monthly phone-in show on radio station WRVA (1140 AM) and at a news conference outside his office, Kaine said that he still hopes to reach terms with the legislature on a remedy for transportation.

But Kaine also suggested that House Republicans refused to send his latest proposal to the floor out of spite — “It has my name on it,” he said — and because “they’re afraid it will pass.”

Jeff Ryer, chief aide to House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, replied, “We’re afraid of a lot of things. His bill passing is not one of them.”

Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, author of the fuel-tax proposal, again expressed frustration with the Republican-controlled House, describing it as “The Gang of 100.”

Saslaw also differed with Kaine on whether Democrats should continue pressing for new transportation dollars next year, given that the partisan line-up at the statehouse will be unchanged.

Over coffee yesterday morning, members of the House Rules Committee snuffed Kaine’s plan, but advanced the Senate measure and another — specifically tailored to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads — without recommendations to approve or reject them.

Favored by many House Republicans, the regional bill is a response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. It relies on a hodgepodge of state and local taxes and fees to support the bonds that would pay for projects in suburban Washington and southeastern Virginia.

While Republicans appear content to only modify the regional plans, Kaine and assembly Democrats say a transportation fix must include funds for maintenance and construction statewide.

The GOP’s regional proposal includes for Northern Virginia a feature that Republicans deemed unacceptable in Kaine’s proposal: an increase in the grantor’s tax, the levy paid by sellers of real estate.

Armstrong, chief sponsor of the Kaine bill, complained that the Rules Committee, headed by Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, had put the GOP-backed measure “on an express train,” precluding public comment.

“This is the oldest deliberative legislative body in the world,” Armstrong said. “This is not a banana republic. It certainly resembled that in this committee this morning.”

On a largely party-line, 11-4 vote, Kaine’s bill was, in legislative parlance, “passed by indefinitely,” effectively killing it.

The panel also advanced the Saslaw gas-tax bill, though it faces near-certain death.

Griffith, who opposes higher taxes, made the motion to send the bill to the House floor, saying he did so to show that Republicans are not obstructionists.

Olympia Meola and Jeff E. Schapiro are staff writers for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Staff writer Jim Nolan contributed to this report.