Va. Road Proposal Faces Hurdle
Finance Chairman Opposes GOP Deal

By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 1, 2007

RICHMOND, Jan. 31 -- House and Senate committees approved a Republican plan Wednesday to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into Virginia's ailing highway and transit systems, but it still faces a crucial hurdle Thursday -- the skeptical Senate Finance Committee.

Finance Committee Chairman John H. Chichester (R-Northumberland) thinks his colleagues' proposal is wildly irresponsible and has renewed his unlikely alliance with Senate Democrats. Chichester and the Democrats are determined to protect the $250 million a year that the proposal would take from existing priorities such as schools, hospitals and the poor.

"It would be nice for something to happen this year, as it would have been nice last year and the year before," Chichester said of transportation funding. "But I would rather do nothing than make a huge mistake that will require repair after repair and be recognized as a lemon."

Although many Democrats are expected to stand beside him, Chichester hardly speaks for most Republicans, who control the General Assembly.

Even Chichester's closest friends in the Senate, part of a group of moderate Republicans known as the Gang of Five, think the transportation plan they brokered with anti-tax House Republicans is the only one that can emerge this year. House leaders are resolute in their opposition to statewide tax increases, and they think they have bent as far as they can by agreeing to local tax increases in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to fund roads and transit in those traffic-choked regions.

"It is ridiculous to offer up a plan that has no hope of going anywhere in the House of Delegates," Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach) said.

Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), another Chichester ally, said, "I am telling you: Nothing -- nothing -- is going to survive the House a nanosecond that's got a statewide tax increase."

That sentiment prevailed Wednesday in the House Appropriations Committee, which approved the Republican plan 18 to 4, and in the Senate Transportation Committee, which passed a similar proposal 11 to 2. On the Senate side, the plan still must pass through the Finance Committee. There, Chichester is expected to offer his plan, one imposing a statewide sales tax on gasoline that the House is sure to reject.

That is the fundamental difference between Chichester's plan and the one brokered by his colleagues. The Republican compromise would pay for transportation with money from the general fund, while Chichester's plan would raise revenue through a 5 percent gas sales tax. That could be a big enough difference to doom either plan this year.

By most accounts, it will be a close vote in a committee in which Chichester needs only a couple of Republicans and all the Democrats to join him.

"If it's still loaded up with general funds, then nothing has changed," Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said. "If it comes to that, I am not going to flush public education, higher education, health and human services and all that to build a few roads around the state of Virginia."

Chichester, first elected in 1977, has long carried the torch for state fiscal responsibility. Under Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R), who took office in 1998 on a promise to eliminate the unpopular car tax, Chichester and Democrats demanded a careful phaseout of the tax that would halt if state revenues did not meet forecasts. In 2004, Chichester teamed with Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) to raise taxes by more than $1.5 billion over two years (and freeze the car tax phaseout) to shore up funding for schools, nursing homes, hospitals, sheriffs, colleges and universities.

Through much of his tenure (he became chairman of Senate Finance in 1996 and president pro tempore of the Senate in 2000), Chichester, a retired insurance agent who turns 70 in August, could count on the other members of the Gang of Five. Often, in the face of tremendous pressure from fellow Republicans, they stood together in the name of fiscal stewardship. They shared an outlook that a sound state budget was more important than a hard-and-fast promise to keep taxes low.

Today, by all accounts, that alliance -- Chichester, Norment, Stolle, Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch (R-Henrico) and Sen. William C. Wampler Jr. (R-Bristol) -- is under its greatest strain.

Although Chichester has not presented his plan formally, he has shared it with colleagues, on the Democratic side of the aisle. The other members of the Gang of Five learned of its details not from their longtime friend but through media inquiries, Stolle and Norment said.

There have been other moments when the strain has shown. Norment, speaking on the Senate floor as if to Chichester last week, talked of the "agitation" among those who oppose the Republican plan.

And Chichester, speaking on the birthday of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, said, as if to his associates: "He led by example, with integrity as his compass. He believed in the righteousness of his cause, and he had a deep spiritual belief in the justice of the Almighty. If we could remember these principles as we go about doing the people's business, I think General Lee would be proud."

Unfortunately for Chichester, perhaps, another principle is at work this year: election-year politics. Mirroring the jitters of Republicans in the House, Chichester's colleagues think there is political peril in failing to strike a transportation deal. It would take just three seats for Republicans to lose their Senate majority.

Chichester is unapologetic.

"There is a plan out there that is fraught with myriad errors," Chichester said. "My responsibility and my duty is to fix that."

Staff writer Tim Craig contributed to this report.