Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Is McDonnell attack really just a smoke screen?
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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One of the striking things about Saturday's gubernatorial debate in Hot Springs was the way former Attorney General Bob McDonnell used his own weakness on transportation funding as a cudgel to beat state Sen. Creigh Deeds over the head.
The Bath County Democrat's crime, according to McDonnell?
Deeds won't take an oath against increasing transportation taxes.
"You don't have a plan," McDonnell lectured.
Deeds' fumbling response was to sputter that no option should be off the table. In a state that hasn't raised its gas tax since 1987, he is exactly right about that.
But the senator should also have enlightened the public about his Republican opponent's own peculiar ideas for solving Virginia's transportation funding woes.
I have looked over the McDonnell plan on his campaign Web site, www.bobmcdonnell.com. You should, too.
What you'll find is a patchwork that's overloaded with complexity, chock full of wishful thinking and seriously flawed overall. It can best be summarized as "Booze, borrowing, tolls and BS."
Let's look at these one at a time.
n Booze: McDonnell would sell off the state's monopoly on liquor sales and spend that money on roads.
Let's put aside for a moment the aberration of a Pat Robertson bootlicker like McDonnell proposing whiskey sales on every street corner, or the sheer oddness of financing road building via drinking.
The big problem is it further dilutes the revenue stream for Virginia's transportation trust fund. That needs to be more user-fee supported, and McDonnell's proposal would make it less so.
n Borrowing: McDonnell calls for issuing $3 billion in highway bonds (which the General Assembly already has approved) and another $1 billion in bonds for projects in congested areas.
"Issuing bonds" is a fancy term politicians use when they mean "borrowing money." And the trouble with borrowing is that you have to pay it back.
There is no solid revenue stream for repayment of all those bonds right now. McDonnell says he'll find the money without saying how.
But he promises it won't be via a statewide gas tax increase, which is the only solid pay-as-you-go option available in the short term.
n Tolls: McDonnell specifically calls for tolls on northbound lanes of interstates 95 and 85 where they enter Virginia.
You get that? North Carolina drivers will be paying those tolls (wink, wink). Until, that is, North Carolina gets in the same game and begins slapping tolls on Virginia drivers headed there.
There is no conceivable end to such state-border tolling wars, and that's why they're the most idiotic way possible to fund highway improvements.
n BS: McDonnell's plan also relies on surplus state revenue -- but there is none right now.
He predicts other revenue from offshore oil and gas fields that haven't even been explored.
He uses an audit in Washington state to prophesy at least $50 million in savings via "modernization" of the Virginia Department of Transportation.
At best, this is wildly wishful thinking at a time when shortfalls in transportation funding are becoming more concrete with each passing day.
VDOT closed 18 interstate rest stops last week, announced 600 layoffs Monday and forecast hundreds more later this year.
Virginia's transportation problems are real, and Deeds should address them.
But Bob McDonnell's solutions are unreal.
Deeds should also call them out as the foolish fantasies they are.
