Tuesday, March 28, 2006
A Western Virginia perspective on roads
From the RoundTable blog
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Ward Armstrong
Armstrong, a Henry County small businessman and attorney, is a Democrat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
In yet another example of how real life rarely matches political life in Richmond, the General Assembly failed to get its work done again this year. If I ran my small business that way, I would have been out of business long ago.
The reason for the delay? The desperate need for better roads and safer bridges and the challenge of how to pay for them all.
Virginia is facing a road and bridge infrastructure crisis. For my district, which includes Martinsville, Henry County, Patrick County and Carroll County, four-laning U.S. 58 has been a top priority for decades. Now it's an urgent public safety necessity. I've spent most of my legislative career fighting for a "modern" U.S. 58. We need a four-lane 58 to save lives and to help us continue to attract good-paying jobs to Southside and Southwest Virginia.
We're certainly not the only area of the state with road and bridge needs. Recently, my wife, Pam, daughter, Whitney, and I traveled to Washington, D.C., to see the pandas at The National Zoo. We headed up Interstate 95 late one Friday afternoon. Just north of Fredericksburg, southbound traffic was at a standstill. On Interstate 495, near Springfield, the beltway became a parking lot. It took us an hour and 20 minutes to drive 11 miles. Northern Virginians fight this congestion every day -- twice (which is why I smile every day I wake up in Henry County).
The House, the Senate and the governor all agree we need to spend about $1 billion a year to begin to catch up on our transportation needs. Gov. Tim Kaine, Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats and House Democrats all believe we should use a reliable, long-term source of revenue to pay for these needs. I agree. But House Republicans want to take the money from our everyday fund -- the general fund -- our state's "day-to-day checking account."
The general fund is the account from which we pay for local education needs, nursing home care for seniors and the disabled, law enforcement, economic development and other critical priorities.
You wouldn't buy a new car out of your kid's college fund. House Republicans shouldn't invest in new roads and bridges using general fund money.
To fund new roads in this fashion, House Republicans must cut the important items paid for with general fund resources. If the Republicans in the House have their way, funds for community colleges will be slashed, the governor's opportunity fund (which is what we used to attract Master Brand cabinets and Star Tek to the area) will be gutted, and the successful Race to G.E.D. initiative will be sliced. We must not shortchange education to pay for desperately needed roads.
House Republicans are also dividing our state because their plan sends most of the new transportation money to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to the exclusion of other regions of the state. They even plan to take $45 million away from U.S. 58 funding that would build the Hillsville bypass.
The House Republicans' move puts into play a kind of regional warfare. I know that lack of adequate transportation funding in Fairfax means longer commutes and greater inconvenience for residents upstate. However, lack of funding for roads here means we don't have jobs to commute to.
Serious talks are under way to create new transportation "authorities" for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads with local taxing and tolling capability. Of course the money generated would be spent on transportation only in those areas and not in this part of the state.
If this local authority plan is in addition to a statewide fix for transportation, fine. Not fine if it isn't. I can't and won't vote for a transportation plan that relies on taking money out of the general fund or funds transportation only in the more-populated regions in the east and north.
Yes, Virginia, we will have a budget, but how it impacts our roads locally depends on you making your voice heard in Richmond that Western Virginia needs roads, too.
