Tommy Denton

Recent columns

• Gifts for sharpening rhetorical swords
• Bush is feeding China's worst instincts
• Heroism in the face of stupidity, and worse
• Treating oil addiction with a dose of harm

• Column archive

Once again, Virginia's political leaders propose, with straight faces, to grapple with the unfinished business of transportation.

Last week, Gov. Tim Kaine called for applying $500 million of a projected total $1.5 billion biennial budget surplus -- including $339 million in revenue the General Assembly refused to spend this year -- for critical, one-time road, rail, port and transit projects in the most congestion-stressed parts of the state.

"Unfortunately, the strength we see in general fund revenues this biennium does not extend to transportation revenues," Kaine said Friday. "Our maintenance and construction funds are down from a year ago, and the revenue forecast projects a further decline of $110 million by the end of the biennium. Declining revenues are further compounded by rapidly increasing material costs, requiring an additional $19 million for maintenance just to keep pace with what we planned six months ago."

He may bring up new money -- taxes and fees -- later in the session, as the politics of the moment allow.

The governor and state senate tried earlier this year to shape a robust initiative that would add $1 billion a year in such new money for the foreseeable future to provide much-needed expansion and improvement of the state's transportation infrastructure.

An obstructionist House leadership preferred fealty to its anti-tax ideology to actually getting the job done. Early responses from the usual suspects among House Republicans suggest things won't be much better when the 2007 legislative session opens in January.

House Speaker William Howell insisted last week, before the governor's presentation, on dedicating up to $275 million in the general fund surplus to transportation. According to one engineering projection earlier this year, the amount the House speaker had proposed would resurface less than 30 miles of Interstate 66.

Never mind the projected shortfall of $108 billion in the next 20 years, as reported to the General Assembly in January, at current levels of funding for construction and maintenance.

As Kaine pointed out Friday, in another example of burning the taxpayers' candle at both ends, the state this year alone raided highway construction funds for $45 million just to perform maintenance. That action spent not one red cent for relieving congestion or advancing economic development -- a huge unmet need across the state.

A rump cadre of eight Northern Virginia Republicans, displaying a serious attention deficit disorder, appeared unable last week to consider more than one simultaneous priority. Once upon a time, the lay diagnosis for such a condition was called the inability to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Dels. Bob Marshal, Michele B. McQuigg, L. Scott Lingamfelter and Jeffrey M. Frederick, all of Prince William, as well as David Albo and Timothy D. Hugo of Fairfax, Marl L. Cole of Fredericksburg and C.L. "Clay" Athey Jr. of Warren said that because Kaine declared transportation the state's most urgent priority -- as if there were no others, such as education, health care and public safety -- the entire surplus should be spent on transportation.

Not an insignificant sum, but big woop: a 2007 spasm of one-time spending on one policy area, and then the surplus is gone for future state needs -- including transportation. Remember that $108 billion shortfall.

Options as offered by the House Republicans suggest -- after a failed regular session and tortured special session in the fall -- either numerical dyslexia, a stunning case of terminal delusion or political malice aforethought. I believe Virginians should, in the spirit of holiday charity, dismiss the actual-malice theory.

The political and economic reality should be evident to those with eyes to see: The current surplus, while a good thing, is fleeting and temporary, and therefore fundamentally unacceptable as a predictable, adequate and reliable revenue source to build and maintain over time so massive a public works project as a modern state's transportation system.

Previous generations of leaders exercised the vision and wisdom to dedicate themselves and future generations to achieve the shared purpose of a vital, prosperous society.

Like Santa, Virginians should begin to make a list of legislators who have been naughty and nice regarding the crucial issue. They should then pay attention to those lawmakers' performances in the 2007 session -- and vote accordingly next November.

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