by Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 14, 2009

When I ran for governor, I told Virginians that I wanted to find transportation solutions — more road, rail and public transit options and better linkages between land use and transportation planning. In my last months in office, I am doing what I hoped to be doing — attending ribbon cuttings and unveiling contracts for transit systems, bridge replacements and expanded Amtrak service. Yet these announcements are quite different from how I envisioned them. The difference between the plan and the reality tells an interesting story about transportation today and points out sizable continuing challenges for the commonwealth.

To put it bluntly, Virginia — because of the Republican-led House of Delegates — has decided that we should not invest more state dollars in transportation. My efforts to get more money for statewide or regional needs have been rebuffed by Republican legislators — and investment in roads has actually been shrinking. We have made massive cuts to our road program, especially for urban and rural roads that do not qualify for federal funding.
With citizens across our state asking for better transportation to attract jobs and fight congestion, the legislature’s response has essentially been: “We don’t care.”

Thank goodness our federal government recognizes the value of infrastructure investments again. Because of a president and Congress committed to this spending, projects such as the Fairfax County Parkway and replacing the Robertson Bridge in Danville are underway. Rail to Dulles and light rail in Norfolk are moving forward. We are pursuing higher-speed rail in the Interstate 95 corridor. But as far as a state commitment goes, Virginia has been AWOL.

While the willingness to find new state funding has been lacking for many years, there have still been some positive developments in how we approach transportation:

First, Virginia knows how to do public-private partnerships. Big projects such as rail to Dulles and high-occupancy toll lanes on the Beltway show that innovative partnerships can be forged. These mechanisms have limits — they don’t work so well in less-traveled areas or for basic maintenance. However, by investing some state dollars, we can attract financing to help us expand in groundbreaking ways.

Second, we are rebalancing our system by putting more money into rail and public transit. Dedicated funding for Metro, VRE and expanded Amtrak service has increased in recent years, sometimes by diverting money that would have been spent on roads in the past. We are investing in freight rail to reduce road congestion. And the new federal commitment to high-speed rail corridors offers Virginia exciting opportunities. These investments ensure that Virginia receives both the economic and environmental benefits of moving away from an overreliance on cars and trucks.

Third, we see that a big part of our transportation challenge is making better land-use decisions. Better land use was the core of my transportation platform when I ran for governor in 2005 — and we have moved far down the field with better road design standards, traffic impact statements that must be prepared before major land-use decisions are made, authority for local governments to assess impact fees for transportation and forthcoming stormwater regulations that will reduce overpaving. Such measures have stopped our congestion from getting worse — as was the case when a state traffic impact statement helped persuade Loudoun to turn down a development proposal to allow more than 20,000 new homes that would have overwhelmed regional roads.

These changes have been important and generally bipartisan in nature. But they do not eliminate the need to find more revenue. Our system has been primarily funded by a very low gasoline tax — 17.5 cents per gallon — that has stayed constant since 1986 even while fuel efficiency standards and construction costs have risen. This funding source will continue to erode with the newly announced agreement to increase vehicle mileage standards nationwide. The unwillingness of the legislature to find new broad-based revenue sources to address our increased need is weakening our ability to build the smart 21st-century network that will keep Virginia competitive for years to come.

Personally, it is gratifying to see a president for whom I worked so hard embrace a priority that Virginia’s House of Delegates majority does not embrace. No nation can grow out of the economic doldrums with a declining infrastructure. But stimulus dollars and other federal spending can vary and disappear. The question remains in 2009: What will Virginia do to fund transportation?

As I enter my last seven months as governor, I am pleased to see important projects moving in some parts of the commonwealth thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and other federal programs. While I never thought I would say this, we could really make some progress if our state legislature had a commitment to Virginia’s infrastructure that came close to matching the federal government’s.

Virginia Republicans Kept Their Promises on Transportation

by William J. Howell, Republican and Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, in the Post on Sunday, June 21, 2009

In a commentary on this page last week, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine attempted to tag Republicans in the House of Delegates with sole responsibility for every failing of Virginia’s transportation system [see above]. In his view, credit for all progress on transportation belongs to his administration and the federal government under President Obama. Although the partisan hard-liners Mr. Kaine serves as Democratic National Committee chairman might concur with this distortion, an objective review of the facts tells a different story.

As a candidate for governor, Tim Kaine promised not to raise taxes, to enact major changes to land-use planning to help reduce congestion and to protect dollars dedicated for the Transportation Trust Fund. Mr. Kaine broke the first promise six days after taking office by unveiling a transportation plan funded by a massive tax increase. He kept the second largely because of the persistence of House Republicans. Frustratingly, he might have kept the third promise had he spent an ounce of political capital in garnering support among Democratic legislators, who have steadfastly refused to act.

Mr. Kaine professes his commitment to transportation, but Virginia was the very last state to apply for federal stimulus dollars ["Va. Is Last State to Request Stimulus Funds for Roads," Metro, June 17]. While Mr. Kaine repeatedly has turned transportation into a wedge issue for partisan advantage, many of the improvements made this decade can be traced directly to the leadership of House Republicans.

First, long-overdue changes linking transportation decisions to land-use planning were integral parts of House Republican transportation packages during the 2006 regular and special sessions and were enacted into law in 2007. These changes include transportation impact fees, urban development areas and greater local control of road projects and maintenance. While Mr. Kaine talked about similar changes in 2005, he never made them the centerpiece of his transportation packages and instead focused predominantly on a job-killing mix of tax increases.

Second, public-private partnerships for transportation — which Mr. Kaine now heralds — are possible because of the landmark Public-Private Transportation Act, sponsored by Republicans. Such partnerships have been an integral component of every House Republican transportation package this decade. More recently, our initiatives to expand tolling concessions such as market-based high-occupancy toll lanes have been blocked by Mr. Kaine and his Democratic allies. Their acknowledged reason for rejecting such reforms: They did not include broad-based tax increases.

Third, in 2005, it was House Republicans who introduced a $1 billion transportation funding package as part of the 2004-06 state budget, with $850 million of that proposal ending up in that year’s final spending blueprint at our insistence. Also that year, House Republicans introduced and led the General Assembly to pass legislation dedicating an ongoing source of revenue to support rail improvements for the first time in Virginia history.

Fourth, in 2007, it was House Republicans who enacted a number of the transportation initiatives we had been promoting for years. As a result, next year Virginia will issue more than $550 million for transportation projects from the $3 billion in bonds the General Assembly authorized in 2007. The road, rail and transit improvements — for which Mr. Kaine now takes full credit — can be directly traced to these Republican initiatives.

Fifth, this year it was Republicans who stood alone in advancing new transportation funding. Our plan, allowing Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to retain a portion of revenue from economic growth for regional transportation improvements, was summarily rejected by Democrats in the state Senate.

Finally, when Gov. Kaine called a special session in 2008 to consider his final transportation tax plan, not a single member of the Democrat-majority Senate would even introduce it. And when delegates were given an opportunity to vote for his plan, it failed to receive a single vote. Not one Democratic legislator voted for Gov. Kaine’s last transportation tax plan, the sole reason for which he had called the special session.

This November Virginians will elect a new governor. We should all hope that their choice is not wedded to the one-note mantra of higher taxes but is instead open to comprehensive and innovative solutions, like the ones once promised — but not delivered — by his predecessor.