The Town Meeting and The Special Session

Since Governor Kaine unveiled his plan to address our transportation challenges, town meetings have been held around the state to discuss various ideas. I held one myself on Monday, June 16, 2008. Present was the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, Barbara Reese, who presented an excellent power point detailing the nature of our problems. We had a great turnout, and many ideas were explored. For those who have not been following this issue, two events occurred during the General Assembly session this year that created additional challenges for transportation funding. The first was the decision to repeal the abusive driver fees. While I supported repeal, the action means the Commonwealth loses $50 million per year in transportation funding. The second was the decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia to hold the mechanism for raising funds in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to be unconstitutional. This created a huge problem for those areas, as the bill we passed in 2007 enabled them to raise significant monies to address transportation.

The Governor recently proposed a plan focused on the following:

1. The maintenance funding shortfall and safety on our roads.

2. Regional relief for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

3. New statewide initiatives to increase investment in transit, rail, aviation, and ports.

Under the plan, regional sales tax increases would raise about $300-450 million for northern Virginia and $168-228 million would be raised for Hampton Roads to address problems in those areas. Beyond that, the Governor's plan would increase the auto titling tax from 3% to 4%, increase vehicle registration fees by $10.00 per year and raise the grantors tax to $.25 per hundred. These measures would create $440 million in yearly additional revenue to help fund statewide initiatives for maintenance, construction and transit. Whatever you think of the Governors plan and the various revenue sources he proposes, he is exercising leadership in addressing critical problems. There are significant numbers in the legislature who have chosen not to recognize that there is a problem, or in the alternative are so blinded by their opposition to raising revenue, that they will oppose any plan. While I do not agree with everything the Governor has suggested, there is no doubt we need some change and some additional revenue. In my view, we should emphasize the following:

1. We need a reliable, dedicated source of revenue that can address our statewide transportation issues. If we do not have a statewide plan, Charlottesville, Albemarle, and our region will suffer, and local citizens will likely pay more in local taxes so we can maintain our roads and transit in many ways that our citizens expect. For example, Albemarle County is spending in excess of $3 million per year in local monies on roads. This amounts to about $.02 of the real estate tax rate. Monies from Richmond would lessen the pressure on the local real estate tax.

2. Any increase in monies should be strategically invested in maintaining our existing roadways and bridges. We should build new roads where appropriate and boost investments in transit and rail. While our region is not enamored with building new roads, there are road improvements that need to be accomplished and have languished because of the lack of state monies. These include improvements such as the expansion of Georgetown Road, improvements to Jarman's Gap Road, the Hillsdale Drive extension, and targeted improvements to Route 29. They also include things such as traffic light synchronization, which has a dramatic impact on congestion and therefore increases the road capacity without building new roads. In the City, there is an increased demand for transit and desire to improve the headways on bus routes. This does not come free, and cities throughout the Commonwealth could use additional operating monies to help with this effort. For those who do not think we have a congestion problem, it is interesting to note that between 1994 and 2008, the number of vehicles in Albemarle County increased by a much higher percentage (34%) than it did in Fairfax County (23%).

3. Since we cannot pave our way out of our problems, we need to think about new and creative ways for linking land use and transportation. I now serve on a committee that will look at all land use policies on the Commonwealth to see how they may be improved. I hope our focus will be on ways we can increase the connectivity of roads so as to increase their capacity at minimal cost, provide incentives for communities to focus development in areas where the infrastructure is already in place, and give localities greater flexibility in the planning process.

It remains to be seen what will happen during the Special Session on transportation which begins Monday, June 23rd. If you have additional ideas, please contact my office or post on my website at www.davidtoscano.com.