JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Lieutenant governor candidates Jody Wagner and Bill Bolling shake hands at the conclusion of Monday night's debate, held at the Olin Theater at Roanoke College in Salem.

The candidates for lieutenant governor clashed early and often Monday night, sparring over transportation funding, tax increases, fiscal management -- and their attendance records at government meetings to address those issues.

Bill Bolling, the Republican seeking re-election, squared off against Democratic challenger Jody Wagner in their first and only debate, held at Roanoke College.

Wagner came out swinging in her opening statement, accusing Bolling of attending just 6 percent of the meetings of the seven state boards and commissions on which he serves.

"These are critical times, and we need a lieutenant governor who's going to show up every day and work full time to make sure we're moving the commonwealth of Virginia forward," Wagner said.

"Instead of coming [to the meetings] and leading, you sniped from the sidelines," Wagner told her opponent at one point.

Bolling called the comments "a classic example of the distortion, the dishonesty and, quite frankly, the hypocrisy" of a campaign that is trailing in the polls.

Wagner "conveniently forgot" to mention that the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate, which makes it impossible to attend every meeting, Bolling said.

Bolling said he made it to about 80 percent of the meetings "when my attendance was required. And when not, I had those meetings attended by a member of my staff."

The lieutenant governor then turned Wagner's accusation against her, saying that she also missed meetings while serving as the secretary of finance for Gov. Tim Kaine and the state treasurer for former Gov. Mark Warner.

Wagner missed about 50 percent of her meetings and did not attend a single session of the state's Transportation Accountability Commission, Bolling said.

"If I was a no-show at some of my meetings, Jody, so were you," Bolling said as the two candidates, standing behind podiums, took questions from moderators Jay Warren of WSLS (Channel 10) and Virginia Tech political analyst Bob Denton.

When it was Bolling's turn to take the offensive, he accused Wagner of making overly optimistic revenue projections during her tenure as Kaine's finance secretary.

During his term as governor, Kaine has been forced four times to cut his two-year budget because of revenue shortfalls, putting the total reductions at $6.9 billion.

Because of Wagner's miscalculations, "we have dug a deep hole, and now we're going to have to climb out of it," Bolling said.

Wagner countered that the process of making revenue forecasts is a bipartisan one, reached in part through an advisory commission that Bolling was invited to attend, but never did.

"There was an empty seat for you, waiting for you to show up," Wagner said in another swipe at Bolling's attendance record, to which she returned repeatedly throughout the hourlong debate before mentioning it yet again in her closing statement.

On the issue of transportation, Wagner said Bolling and his running mate, former Attorney General Bob McDonnell, want to take money from the state's education system to pay for roads.

Bolling accused Wagner and her gubernatorial running mate, Sen. Creigh Deeds, of supporting tax increases for road building and maintenance -- among other things.

While Deeds has said that he would be willing to consider new funding sources for transportation, Wagner said she was not aware of him actually advocating an increase in the gas tax or other taxes to meet his goal.

"You keep saying I want to raise taxes. I'm not in favor of raising taxes," Wagner told Bolling.

About halfway through the debate, the two candidates discovered they were operating under a different understanding of the rules about using notes and other written material.

Wagner raised the issue after Bolling read from a newspaper article to support one of his points, saying she thought such prompts were not allowed. Warren agreed that the candidates were not permitted to have written comments.

But Bolling resumed reading from the article a few minutes later. "I think you're wrong," he said when Warren tried to stop him. "I've reviewed the rules."

As it turned out, the rules were silent on the use of notes or written materials. When Wagner called the Virginia Bar Association, which sponsored the debate, to ask about the rule earlier Monday, she was mistakenly told she could have only a pen and blank pad at the podium.

The VBA apologized to both candidates for the mix-up, said Travis Hill, co-chairman of the organization's debate committee.

For both candidates, the debate offered the rare opportunity of undivided statewide attention, at least for one night.

As is often the case, the election for lieutenant governor has been overshadowed this year by the races for governor and attorney general -- the two full-time and higher-profile slots on this year's statewide ticket.

The lieutenant governor's job in Virginia is a part-time gig, with the primary responsibility of presiding over the Senate and breaking tie votes.

Bolling entered the debate with a 29 percent to 25 percent lead over Wagner, according to a recent statewide poll taken by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News. About 45 percent of those surveyed were undecided.

Monday night's debate offered voters their only chance to see Bolling and Wagner in a face-to-face confrontation. There had been talk of a second debate in Prince William County, but those plans fell through after the two campaigns could not agree to the rules.