N.Va. Leaders Lack Consensus on Tax

After failing to approve a transportation plan during their regular session, lawmakers agreed to return to Richmond for a three-day special session at the end of this month. The issue has been championed by Republicans and Democrats from fast-growing Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, but it has been complicated by a powerful anti-tax sentiment among Republican leaders of the GOP-controlled House.

House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said this week that he continues to oppose any plan that calls for tax increases and wants one that funnels existing revenue to transportation. But he has also told several Northern Virginia Republicans that he will not get in the way of their measure, which would raise and spend $417 million a year in this region.

"I don't control the House Finance Committee," he said, referring to the panel that will first decide the fate of the transportation proposal.

Backers of the Northern Virginia bill, including Dels. David B. Albo and Thomas Davis Rust, both Fairfax Republicans, have won support from many business leaders and their counterparts in Hampton Roads, who have written a similar proposal.

If state lawmakers approve the plan, local politicians would have to enact the tax increases. But some local officials have objected to that approach because they fear being labeled as tax increasers by opponents while state lawmakers escape criticism.

But Albo and Rust said they could work out that difference with local leaders by eliminating the requirement that jurisdictions enact the tax increases.

They said they had wanted to make the taxes local revenue instead of state revenue to protect the money in future years, when a weak economy might prompt lawmakers to raid it.

But Albo and Rust said another option is for the state to borrow the money up front and dedicate the new tax receipts to paying off the debt. Lawmakers would be on the hook to pay it down, so the new tax revenue could never be appropriated for other uses, they said.