Kaine Seeks Victory for Both Sides in Tax Impasse

"I'll be down there. I don't know what we'll accomplish," said House Appropriations Chairman Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax), who leads the House team.

Senators back a budget that includes adding more than $1 billion a year for transportation projects by raising taxes and fees. The House version of the budget would allocate about $350 million in continuing revenue for roads, bridges and transit.

Callahan said the budget conferees will gather at 11 a.m. in the legislative office building to find ways to reconcile their differences.

In the end, though, the solution to Virginia's 2006 budget problems may emerge outside the conference room, as it did -- eventually -- in 2004. Warner worked with delegates and senators who were not part of the budget negotiations.

In the House, then-Del. L. Preston Bryant Jr. (R-Lynchburg) and Del. S. Chris Jones (R-Suffolk) joined some of Warner's top aides to persuade 17 GOP delegates to vote for a tax increase. Bryant is now Kaine's secretary of natural resources.

In the Senate, Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) and Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach) -- both senior Republicans, but neither a budget negotiator -- worked to sell the Bryant-Jones plan to senators who initially believed it didn't raise enough money.

On May 7 of that year, lawmakers finally ratified the deal they hammered out.

In an interview for a Harvard University case study on the contentious battle, Senate Finance Chairman John H. Chichester (R-Northumberland) gave Warner credit for finding a way around the deadlocked negotiators.

"He would take those members to his office and sit down with them and work through their concerns and ideas -- and keep at it until he had the number of bodies he needed," Chichester said. "I was already wearing the horns and a forked tongue for even proposing this thing, so my credibility with the newer breed of Republicans was gone. . . . [But the governor] could command the stage."

Now, the question is whether Kaine can find a way to bring the House and Senate together on a plan for transportation improvements.

Kaine left Sunday for a surprise week-long trip to visit troops from Virginia in Iraq and Afghanistan. But before he left, he promised to wage a robust public campaign on behalf of his plan.

"I'm going to [talk] to Virginians about why transportation is the most urgent priority in the state," Kaine told reporters.

Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.