A pointless year for transportation
Rather than provide leadership on investments, Gov. McDonnell settled for a minor scuffle over meager dollars.
For business leaders and others serious about the need for a sustainable investment in transportation, the 2012 General Assembly session was utterly pointless. It’s fitting, then, that the budget season would conclude with a final, utterly pointless scuffle.
Gov. Bob McDonnell won that scuffle last week when he vetoed a provision in the budget that would have restricted his ability to earmark future surplus revenues for road and bridge projects.
June 19, 2012 - 7:32 AM
Bobby McD continues to show what a liar he was when he promised during his campaign that solving transportation funding woes would be one of his top priorities.
I’m starting to believe that a big part of the reason for almost no meaningful action from the state level on transportation funding is that the state wants to devolve…i.e. shift all transportation funding, maintenance, and construction to localities. Right now, they’re letting localities who want to volunteer to do this take it all on, but there have been few takers.
So, how best to make it happen? Starve VDOT by failing to raise sufficient revenues, rendering the agency utterly useless for anything beyond basic maintenance (which is sketchy in many regards already). As an example, my home county of Pulaski got less than $100,000 in construction funding allocated for Secondary highways. That’s it. A decade ago they got $1 million a year.
So, starve VDOT…enrage the public and local governments, and the complete the destruction of VDOT by shifting almost every responsibility to the local level, shifting the meager remaining revenues to the local government level…meaning each locality must then buy equipment, hire people, and start managing their network of roads…or hire it out to a private contractor like VDOT has already done for the interstates.
Net result? Any remaining ability for the state to adequately address transportation funding is gutted because the state has washed their hands of it all…and the local governments are now saddled with trying to start their own mini DOT’s or hire a larger company that can handle it…then figure out what taxes to raise to fund it all…in all likelihood property and real estate taxes, meals and lodging taxes, and possibly the introduction of local income taxes.
And all that because the leadership in Richmond is completely and utterly spineless to do the right thing and get the fuels tax boosted to a sufficient level, and index it to the CPI so that it keeps up better with future state-wide needs. Parties, their leadership, and the folks in the GA should be ashamed…but I know they are not.