Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Editorial: Not the way to go on funding roads
Tying transportation money to economic growth around the state's ports would hurt core services -- and do nothing for much of the state.
From the RoundTable blog
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The Virginia General Assembly is still in search of new, much-needed transportation revenue that doesn't involve levying new taxes.
A recent iteration is House Bill 1579, prefiled for the 2009 session by Republican Del. Glenn Oder of Newport News. It would skim a portion of state revenues generated by economic growth attributable to Virginia's ports and dedicate the money to road improvements around those facilities.
Oder is not just talking about the seaports in Hampton Roads. His bill also includes the Port of Richmond on the James River, as well as Dulles International and Reagan National airports in Northern Virginia, and the Inland Port at Front Royal in the northern Shenandoah Valley.
As a practical matter, lawmakers should look skeptically at the idea that the ports will be creating a lot of economic growth, thus generating a lot of new revenue, during a period of deep recession.
But that, presumably, is a short-term drawback.
The idea is not good for the commonwealth in the long term, either. It would divert a portion of state revenue that otherwise would go into the general fund and dedicate it to transportation projects -- not statewide, but only in designated regions with port facilities.
Such a back-door raid on the general fund would be folly. That money is supposed to support the state's other core services: public safety, health and education. And that support is already inadequate to the need on many scores. As state revenue plunges in tandem with the national economy, those services will be cut deeply; the pain will be increasingly evident in Virginia's communities.
When the economy recovers, so too should the state's support of its obligations.
Of course, transportation is a huge and long-neglected obligation, as well -- but one that legislators should not meet at the expense of other core services, or with a piecemeal approach to a statewide predicament.
HB 1579 and similar proposals likely to be kicked around in the upcoming General Assembly suffer from both failures.
Some lawmakers see port-generated revenues as a potential way to come up with the matching funds the state probably will need to get a piece of the huge federal stimulus package that President-elect Obama wants to spend on infrastructure projects.
That stimulus is needed well beyond Virginia's Golden Crescent.
