Va. Assembly Receives Two Weeks' Reprieve

RICHMOND, March 11 -- Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) ordered Virginia's Republican-controlled legislature to return to work in two weeks, after the bitterly divided lawmakers adjourned Saturday without a budget or an agreement on new funds for transportation.

The 2006 General Assembly reached the end of its regular 60-day session mired in an impasse over the budget and wracked by a division about how high taxes should be.

The stalemate means that Northern Virginia commuters stuck in traffic or crammed into trains will have to wait longer to see whether Kaine and the state Senate succeed in their proposals to spend about $1 billion a year more on roads, bridges, tunnels and transit services. Or whether the House of Delegates fends them off with its plan for a much smaller spending increase without additional taxes.

Lawmakers will return March 27 to try again. The legislature must adopt a two-year budget by July 1, when the current spending plan expires.

"The transportation issues and budget issues are critical, and they are also timely," Kaine told senior lawmakers after issuing his order. "A two-week respite for the legislature is understood. Go home. Get reacquainted with family. Take care of business. Drive some roads. But then we need to come back and be very, very focused on finishing in a prompt way."

Kaine acted after a chaotic day in which senators and delegates argued for hours about whether to call themselves back into session, and if so, how. His order to return was read in both chambers about 5 p.m.

Afterward, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) reiterated his opposition to taxes and predicted that lawmakers will hear that message from constituents in the next two weeks.

"When the House and the Senate are back home in their communities, I think they'll hear . . . that, 'Yeah, we in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads have some transportation problems, but I'm not sure giving [the Virginia Department of Transportation] another billion dollars is the best way to deal with that,' " Howell said. "I know that's what I'm hearing."

Kaine said he plans to take his message on the road again with more town hall meetings. But he would not say whether, or when, residents might begin hearing radio ads or seeing fliers in their mailboxes.

The governor began pushing for a solution to traffic congestion -- which he often calls Virginia's "most urgent" problem -- within days of his victory over Republican Jerry W. Kilgore in November.

But his promise of the first big infusion of money for transportation in a generation is caught in a fight between two wings of the Republican Party: Senate Republicans, who agree with the governor's call for investment, and House GOP leaders, who refuse to consider higher taxes to pay for those improvements.

"It's a difference over the future of Virginia and the role of investment and taxes," said Robert D. Holsworth, director of the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.