A state of two minds (Part 2 of 2)

It is possible, of course, for Virginia’s policymakers – at times – to come together and support particular initiatives that are demonstrated to be key to a particular region’s present-day health and future growth. Generally, though, legislators’ wherewithal to do that in a big-picture sort of way for the entire state is suspect.

The past handful of General Assembly sessions have presented opportunities for broad consensuses to be reached on a number of regional investment initiatives. Sometimes delegates and senators have gelled in support of them, sometimes they haven’t.

When southwestern Virginia legislators pushed a few years ago for certain tax credits deemed critical to support their region’s coal industry, delegates and senators from other parts of the state rallied to support them. When Hampton Roads legislators asked for significant investments to boost their shipbuilding industry, legislators from outside their region rallied to support them. And when the Southside delegation initially laid out a long-term investment plan to upgrade U.S. Route 58 over hundreds of miles, they likewise received fairly broad support.

Then came Hampton Roads’ and Northern Virginia’s attempts – on and off at times and then a couple of years in a row – to get legislative approval for regional referendums on sales-tax hikes to fund improvement to their significant transportation needs. The issue proved to be divisive, perhaps less for reasons of regionalism than for differing views on the propriety of segmenting – segregating? – both tax and transportation policies that historically have been uniform across the state. Some just didn’t think it appropriate to create a patchwork quilt of sales-tax rates or that it’d be in Virginia’s long-term interests to create a haves-and-have-nots kind of transportation system, one where two regions got big boosts while others continued fighting for scraps.

It wasn’t until the 2004 General Assembly session that we saw truly raw divisiveness break out over making big, broad investments in the commonwealth as a whole, the kinds that stretch across regions and benefit multiple fronts, everything from secondary and higher education to health care to public safety. Everything, of course, save transportation.

And in this 2004 battle, it really boiled down to differences – legitimate ones – over tax policy. No if, ands, or buts.

But setting aside tax-policy differences – if, indeed, that’s possible – what will it take for Virginia’s delegates and senators to come together in a broad way and take a universal view of the state’s health, diagnose its needs, and put in place both a short- and long-term plan to meet them? That’s the $64,000 question.

Oddly, it may be as much as a half-century ago that the legislature last exhibited the kind of esprit de corps necessary to promote a cause – though certainly not a noble one – that’d define Virginia for generations to come. That’s when the House of Delegates and Senate easily passed a resolution in support of the Doctrine of Interposition – touting state sovereignty against federal intrusion – and set in motion a movement that’d become known as Massive Resistance.

Sadly, though, the legislature today can’t come together to form a plan to address the many billions of dollars worth of transportation needs that most everyone agrees exist, which likewise would define Virginia for generations to come.

So a certain question remains: How can there be created today a kind of legislative esprit de corps – though for positive change, of course – that breaks down geographical and political barriers and promotes an agenda that will set Virginia on a path to be the most envied state in the union?

It takes little for a southwestern Virginia legislator to get exorcised over hundreds of millions of dollars going to Northern Virginia’s mass transit system – but what does it take for that southwestern legislator to get excited about it?

Similarly, many Northern Virginia legislators look askance at the need for the $1.5 billion Coalfields Expressway – but how much do they really know about the road’s importance to the mountain region’s economic development?

And can western Virginia delegates and senators really understand the obstacles that having too much water causes Hampton Roads developers and planners any more than Tidewater legislators can fully appreciate that some of their western counterparts’ constituents don’t have water at all?

These are the kinds of micro disconnects that play into the way legislators think – and vote – on many macro issues. These are signs and symptoms of a larger problem.

In many respects, gimme-gimme issues fall along rural vs. urban lines. The two main issues breaking this way are transportation and education, where long-standing funding models benefit the less affluent (usually rural) jurisdictions by tapping the largess generated by the wealthier (usually urban) ones. The current political climate has urban legislators seething with every passing year that their constituents sit in grid-locked traffic en route to pick up their kids from classroom trailers, while rural delegates and senators pray that the votes aren’t marshaled to change things.

Let’s face it, if the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads legislative delegations wanted to change the transportation and education funding formulas – ridding the state of the Robin Hood shifts they find hard to explain back home – the may be able to muscle it through the General Assembly, though not without something akin to a world war breaking out. But it’s quite unlikely that any governor would sign it, given the importance of the rural vote to anyone wanting to maintain statewide electoral appeal.

There is no easy answer to overcoming the natural geo-political forces that define legislators and the representation they deliver. We can only rely on facts, with hopes that understanding and big-picture thinking spring from them.

It’s a fact, for example, that if Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads can’t meet their transportation challenges, their economies will suffer – and, in turn, rural localities benefiting from the resources transferred to them from these urban economies will suffer. Is that realization enough for rural folks to vote for massive new transportation initiatives in urban Virginia?

It’s also a fact that without at least proportional infrastructure investments made in less populous parts of the state to boost development of rural economies, those rural areas will forever be tapping into others’ good fortune. Is that realization enough for urban legislators to support big money flowing south and west?

It’s hopeful that Virginia can again become less a state than a commonwealth, in every sense of the word – independent and proud, and where its parts within work in conjunction to accentuate each other’s strengths for the benefit of the whole.

If we don’t change our mindset – not just legislators, but Virginians as a whole – then we’re destined to continue fighting the same old battles when we really should be focused on turning our Old Dominion into a new one.