Multimedia Blitz Launched on Transportation Funding Debate

Kaine is also featured in automated phone calls that began running in some districts across Virginia on Tuesday. Elleithee said the script is similar to the radio ad.

House Republicans said the governor's telephone calls and radio ads stress transportation investments but not the tax increases Kaine has proposed to finance them.

"The big lie continues," Del. Leo C. Wardrup Jr. (R-Virginia Beach) said. "What difference does it make what he says? You can't believe any of it."

Del. Phillip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News) said sarcastically that he couldn't believe Kaine would manipulate the facts of the transportation debate to his own advantage. "Are you kidding?" Hamilton said. "He is being dishonest?"

A group called Americans for Freedom and Prosperity announced this week that it has purchased more air time for a radio ad that accuses Kaine of conspiring with like-minded lawmakers to enact higher taxes.

Titled "Again," the ad says that "Governor Kaine and leaders in the Virginia Senate have each proposed a nearly $4 billion tax hike, with higher taxes on sales of cars and trucks. Do you want higher taxes when Virginia is enjoying a billion dollar surplus?"

The Kaine and Senate plans would raise about $4 billion over four years.

The group's Web site is at http://www.afpva.org .

Even as the air war began, a handful of lawmakers in Richmond continued the on again, off again ritual of trying to reach some agreement on a two-year, $72 billion budget.

House Republicans suggested considering the transportation issue separately from the rest of the budget issues. That way the two sides could come to an agreement in other areas and return later to debate spending more for roads, tunnels, bridges and transit, they said.

They proposed putting about $1 billion into a temporary reserve fund for transportation during the next two years. The fund would include deposits of $806 million the first year and $224 million the second year, Hamilton said.

Senate Finance Chairman John H. Chichester (R-Northumberland) told House negotiators that his side would discuss the proposal and get back to them. But he had labeled the idea "a Mexican hat dance."

"They'd try to pay for specific [road] projects for political advantage and go home, and then you'd never get them back for transportation," he said.