Parsing Kaine: Did He Mean 'No New Taxes'?

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 2, 2006

Is Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) getting off easy when it comes to his decision to raise taxes despite a campaign promise not to?

That depends on what, exactly, you think he promised.

Kaine's predecessor, Mark R. Warner (D), was clear as crystal during his own campaign in 2001. He looked into the camera and said: "Let me set the record straight: I will not raise taxes." He later did just that, explaining that the state's financial situation was much worse than he was led to believe.

Kaine's history of tax-related promises is not so clear.

Early in his campaign, Kaine said he would not seek new revenue for transportation -- code for a tax increase -- unless the state's Transportation Trust Fund was locked up tight. He vowed to push for a constitutional amendment to keep lawmakers from dipping into the fund for reasons unrelated to roads.

Here he was on Nov. 17, 2004, a year before the election:

"So long as we have a transportation fund with a hole in it, I don't think it's right," he told reporters after a speech to the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. "The people sent us a very strong message in 2002 [when voters rejected a tax increase for transportation]. Unless we show them we listened to what they said, we can't very well go back and ask them for more money."

That's pretty clear, right? No tax increases without a constitutional amendment. And because a constitutional amendment takes a minimum of three years, a tax increase would seem to have been put off until at least 2009.

But on Feb. 27, 2005, he added this: "There would have to be absolute certainty about it. Could something make me feel certain short of the voters approving the change in a referendum? Maybe."

In that interview, I pressed Kaine to explain how he might feel "certain" and whether the ambiguity opened the door to the possibility of a tax increase.

Being in the beginning stages of his campaign against former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore (R), Kaine was taking great pains to explain why a tax increase, especially on gas, was not a likelihood if he were elected governor.

"I'm very clear on this," he said. "I'm not going to ask people for any more revenue when there's no guarantee that the revenue will go to transportation."

"I will not be party to a deception. I will not go to the people and say, 'Gosh, gosh, it would be nice to have more revenue for transportation' when I know we've got a legislature that has shown a propensity to yank the money out for something else," he added. "If money can be taken out of the trust fund, I'm not going to ask people for more money. It's just wrong."

For the next several months, Kaine was repeatedly criticized by road advocates for ruling tax increases off-limits until nearly the end of his term.

So on Sept. 14, the day after the gubernatorial debate in Fairfax County, he told reporters this:

"I've never made the constitutional amendment the precondition," he said. "I've made locking up the trust fund and guaranteeing you are not going to raid it the precondition."

Kaine said he hadn't yet "thought through necessarily what all the mechanisms could be" to protect the trust fund without an amendment.

And then he offered his idea for financing roads: "When it comes to transportation, we use the existing revenue streams, we put the money back from the auto insurance premiums, we use surplus dollars, we do public-private toll road projects that we've been doing, like the [high-occupancy toll] lane proposals and the Dulles Toll Road. We do all that."

Do that, he said, and lock up the trust fund, and "I'll work in good faith to look for revenue."

To those hoping for a tax increase, that made Kaine sound positively open to the idea. But Kaine was quick to throw cold water on tax increases during the final televised debate, in October.

"He's going to raise your taxes if he's elected governor," Kilgore told the TV audience.

"There you go again, Jerry," Kaine responded, "making stuff up. You're not fit to be governor if you make stuff up on this stage."

Later in that debate, Kaine said the key to the question of transportation financing was "balance."

Six days after he took office, Kaine offered a plan that included no gas tax increase but would raise taxes on cars and insurance and raise other fees. It would generate about $1 billion per year from what Kaine says are the "users" of the transportation system.

Acknowledging that a constitutional amendment is years off, Kaine vowed to veto any bill that "raids" money from the trust fund. And he said he would insist that any tax or fee increase automatically expire if any raid is performed. With that, he declared himself "certain" that the trust fund will be locked up until an amendment can be approved later in his term.

Did he break his promise?

Maybe it depends on what your definition of a promise is.