Kaine Plan To Shield Funds Is Criticized

Maryland leaders have dipped into that state's trust fund during economic downturns six times since 1984, said Erin Henson, a Maryland Department of Transportation spokeswoman.

It's happened twice during the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), for a total of $315 million. Henson said the money transferred in 2003 and 2004 will be repaid by 2010.

It's happened repeatedly in Virginia since 2002, when Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) used $317 million from the fund to help offset a state budget that was billions in the red. Warner promised that the maneuver wouldn't slow construction, and he took out a special loan to repay the fund immediately.

But the moves created a $38 million-a-year gap in transportation funds, according to state officials. State lawmakers replaced that amount each year until a budget surplus allowed them to repay the loan in full last year, but the uncertainty and the timing of the payback slowed projects.

"It affected the amount of money distributed to districts," said Thomas F. Farley, who was the Northern Virginia administrator for the Virginia Department of Transportation until he retired in 2004.

Farley added that Virginians would repay a far greater amount than was taken from the fund because costs, particularly for buying land, have risen dramatically.

"Time is money," he said. "Every dollar lost was potentially a project that couldn't begin."

In the next three years, the state transferred a total of $61.7 million, said Neal Menkes, a fiscal analyst for the Senate finance committee. Menkes said the five transfers, including one from the early 1990s, totaled $588.9 million.

Warner's actions, which were approved by the General Assembly, had another impact: They made some leery of raising more money for transportation projects.

That view helped sink ballot proposals in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads later that year that had asked voters to raise taxes to pay for billions in transportation improvements.

"The perception by many Virginians is a lack of confidence in the Department of Transportation and the General Assembly," said Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City). An amendment "creates a very vivid commitment by the legislature and the executive branch that we will not put our hand in the transportation trust fund cookie jar to pay for non-transportation expenses."

John Milliken, Virginia's transportation secretary during the early 1990s, when $173 million was taken from the fund to balance the state's budget, said it was necessary to use the money then, but he now supports a constitutional amendment because the state has since established a rainy day fund to tap during economic crises.

"There are just too many other demands that if we want to keep it segregated, we have to have a way to do so that can't be breached," Milliken said.

Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.