Virginia's GOP, in Denial
On transportation funding, the Republicans peddle slogans, not solutions.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

TO HEAR Virginia Republican leaders describe it, you'd think the state's jampacked roads, crumbling bridges and soaring maintenance spending were a partisan conspiracy cooked up by spendthrift Democrats in Richmond whose gloom about the economy is baseless. These insistently sunny Republicans are so certain that state coffers will soon be overflowing again that they refuse to see reality: Virginia, like practically every other major, urbanized state in the nation, is facing a huge and growing maintenance and infrastructure crisis that is rapidly draining away money that might be spent on badly needed road and rail projects.

Disliking the proposition that revenue from the gas tax, the state's main source of transportation funding, is shrinking because of dwindling consumption, GOP grandees simply say it ain't so. In the face of projections from the state Transportation Department showing that maintenance spending will utterly deplete the road construction budget within a decade, the Republicans are in denial. As the traffic backs up and bridges groan from excess use, the Republicans blithely chant their mantra of "no new taxes" and call for an audit of the state's numbers.

This is recklessness on a grand scale. The numbers on which the state bases its revenue projections for transportation were ordered up a few years ago by the General Assembly, when it was dominated by Republicans. Republican chieftains such as Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell and House Speaker William J. Howell shout from the rooftops that the legislature last year mandated $500 million in new annual spending for transportation. But their figures include nonexistent budget surpluses and bond revenue that will expire within a decade, and they ignore the fact that material costs for maintenance are increasing sharply (see: China, competition from) while gas tax revenue, which represents 40 percent of the state's transportation funding, dwindles. The federal Highway Trust Fund, which was established to ensure a reliable source of money for the nation's interstate system, is in deficit for the same reasons.

A showdown comes in a month, when the legislature convenes for a special session called by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) to address the crisis in transportation funding. Brace yourself for the spectacle of Republican leaders who have no solutions, only empty partisan slogans about tax-and-spend Democrats. Northern Virginians who listen to the battle blow-by-blow on their car radios while sitting in some of the worst traffic jams in the nation will know whom to blame.