Tommy Denton

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That raspy wheeze that Virginians heard last week was the premature sigh of relief issuing from remote corners of the commonwealth, hoping that finally, maybe, those paragons of parsimonious procrastination in the General Assembly had reached a compromise in the bitter, enduring dispute over funding transportation.

Not that sterling ideas have not emerged on a number of fronts. They have. Unfortunately, until now and only grudgingly and lamely, no idea has been sufficiently visionary to convert the anti-tax-at-all-costs apostles of avoidance who have been bent on committing fiscal malpractice.

Frustrated Virginians watched helplessly as the House of Delegates refused -- in last year's regular session and a special session in September -- to budge on proposals to provide a comprehensive 21st century transportation system. Gov. Tim Kaine and responsible members of the legislature had demanded that the state establish a sound, prudent, reliable means of actually paying for such a system. Such a system should include an increase in the gasoline tax, last adjusted in 1986.

Lawmakers who had negotiated for months in good faith finally expressed their exasperation with the bull-headed recalcitrance of their inflexible House colleagues. Senate leader John Chichester, R-Stafford, angrily threw up his hands and indicated someone else would have to try reasoning with that irrational, immovable stone.

Roanoke's Democratic Sen. John Edwards went so far as to call the special session no more than "a sham."

Now come jittery Republicans, three from each chamber, herded like cats by nervous interlocutor Republican Attorney Gen. Bob McDonnell, to hammer out a list of what they, with straight faces, continue to insist are meaningful concessions.

That has to be a source of some anxiety for McDonnell and other more prescient members of his party. Their keenly attuned political ears no doubt have detected the intensifying drumbeat suggesting voters' ballot box retribution later this election year.

Among the lead legislative obstructionists whose hearing is not so acute, House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, was tickled plum to death with what he characterized as a major compromise.

"This," said Howell, who is leading the GOP effort despite past objections to tax increases, "really has been a remarkable occurrence."

As that great American patriot Ross Perot used to put it: compared to what?

The compromises still rely on raiding the general fund of resources that pay for other fundamental services such as education, health and public safety. Early indications from Richmond last week suggested that the state already is experiencing a decline in deposits of tax collections into the general fund compared with the previous year. Not a good trend.

Except for the proposed $10 increase in vehicle registrations and 1.5 penny per gallon on the diesel tax, most of the tax increases would actually shove that responsibility -- through local fees and taxes -- onto jurisdictions in Northern Virginia and Tidewater, rather than approaching state transportation policy comprehensively and systematically.

The tentative budget surplus remains a key target for excessive exploitation, although surpluses ebb as well as flow. How quickly lawmakers and others forget the ease with which looming deficits not so long ago resulted in the regrettable evisceration of public funding for education, mental health and other critical human services.

Still crucial to the Republican plan is the insistence on assuming substantial public debt, yet with only the sketchiest plan for realizing long-term, reliable revenue streams to retire that debt.

The same fiscal predisposition to borrow the state out of its responsibilities almost jeopardized Virginia's bond rating until Kaine's predecessor, Mark Warner, managed to prevail against a reluctant General Assembly as recently as 2004 to snatch sanity from the jaws of anti-tax ideology.

Essentially, the effort to persuade the public that the usual suspects have now placed some substantive compromise on the table smacks more of political calculation than a gesture to achieve sound public policy in the faithful service of current and future generations of Virginians.

Such a policy is a larger proposition than mere roads and bridges, although it includes those. The transportation system the public should expect and demand will include investments not only in efficient, energy-saving rail and transit infrastructure but also in cutting-edge technology through intelligent transportation systems statewide.

That's the concession Virginians should demand from those who represent them.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.