BY JEFF E. SCHAPIRO and JIM NOLAN
Media General News Service
Published: May 8, 2008

Thirty legislators — from both parties, from both ends of Virginia’s urban crescent — crowded around a conference table May 6, searching for common ground on a fiscal fix for transportation.

During a meeting at a Henrico office park, they agreed on one thing: that the people who could solve the politically volatile problem weren’t even in the room.

Referring to House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, and Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, said, “Until those two get together and smoke a peace pipe in a teepee, there’s no bill — period.”

Howell is standing firm against new taxes for roads and rail. Saslaw is pushing for an increase in the gasoline tax, perhaps a nickel over five years to 22.5 cents per gallon to generate at least $250 million.

Delegates and senators from Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia were in accord that as the General Assembly makes its third attempt in three years to bail out transportation, in a special session beginning June 23, the remedy should address regional and statewide problems.

“We’ve established that the cat needs a bell,” said Del. Joe T. May, R-Loudoun, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. “We only have to decide who’s going to hang the bell on the cat.”
However, there was no consensus on how to pay for asphalt and steel.

Democrats, who outnumbered Republicans at the 3 1/2-hour session better than 2 to 1, generally endorsed new sales and or fuel taxes. Several Republicans signaled a willingness to consider higher levies, though others warned that such proposals will not escape the House Finance Committee, dominated by anti-tax GOP delegates.

Because of the hostile legislative landscape in the House, Del. Phillip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News, vice-chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that lawmakers must consider alternatives to taxes. Among them, Hamilton said, are tolls — the “ultimate user fees” — to generate $1.5 billion for a third tube on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.

Del. David L. Englin, D-Alexandria, suggested a 50-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax. That, he said, would raise an additional $200 million per year, almost as much money as is lost annually to maintenance from the road-construction fund.

Englin also recommended higher income taxes for Virginians earning more than $350,000 per year.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, and the General Assembly are ensnared again in the transportation-finance tangle because of a voter revolt last summer and a decision in February by the Virginia

Supreme Court that lopped about $600 million from 2007’s hard-won highway-and-mass transit plan.

The state junked bad-driver fees — a scheme that was supposed to generate $65 million — because Virginians were angry that they were imposed only on in-state motorists.