(NOTE: Our 7 West neighbor, Delegate Mark Sickles, offers his analysis of the funding mechanism for the transportation plan the House passed this week. Bottom line: “it is very bad transportation policy.”  What do you think?)

The majority leadership transportation plan approved by the House of Delegates is commendable for allowing, for the first time, the two hottest economic corners of the Commonwealth to provide for themselves in order to make up for years of underinvestment in public infrastructure.  As good as the Northern Virginia bipartisan plan is, it provides little more than half of the needed construction funds to build our constrained 2030 plan if the revenues are approved by all nine local jurisdictions. 

Northern Virginia still needs a robust statewide plan to fill the statewide maintenance backlog so that construction funds under existing programs are no longer siphoned off the top for repaving roads.  The bill that passed the House raises the lion’s share of the new statewide funds from a “commitment” in perpetuity of $250 million annually from “General Fund” income, corporate, and sales tax revenues.  Until now, almost all of the money spent on transportation has come from “Non-General Fund” sources, meaning user fees and dedicated transportation taxes. 

The often heard opposition to using general funds for transportation comes from the fear, not irrational, that education re-benchmarking, or nursing home care, or Medicaid waivers, or natural resources, or public safety will be shortchanged in the future competition with transportation for scarce funds.   

The bigger worry, however, is that it is very bad transportation policy.  In good economic times like these, taking $250 million off the top for transportation may not do significant harm to vital state programs.  We can prioritize with greater overall state revenue—in theory, there will be more for everybody. 

What happens with the next economic downturn?  It is much more likely that transportation will be cut before touching K-12 education, or Medicaid reimbursement (since we already rank 48 of 50), or cost of living adjustments, or the number of prison guards.  Transportation spending will certainly be first up on the chopping block, since—as we have impressively proven—investment can be delayed.  The costs of delay simply show up later in quality of life measures as we continue to grow in the shadow of the Nation’s Capital. 

Finally, without new, reliable, sustained sources of dedicated revenue, it will be hard to plan and execute our transportation future.  The General Assembly’s commitment to $250 million will only be known with the passage of each two-year budget.  Our six-year plans, if we assume the revenues, will once again not be worth the paper they are printed on.  How can you build a reliable long term transportation program using a two-year budget?  In 2000, the General Assembly tried to use general funds with disastrous results.  The economy went sour.  All of the general funds were pulled out of the six-year program and the state had to sell nearly $1 billion in debt, simply to prevent total chaos.  Even with the new debt, the program was cut by 27 percent or $2.7 billion in 2002.

It is conservative, and often preferable, to provide public services with user fees when you can.  (Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is wholly funded by non-general funds known as hunting and fishing licenses.)  If we adopt the House bill, it will mark the beginning of the abandonment of a conservative policy that served Virginia and all other states well for decades.  Unfortunately, our collective elected leadership has, for the last 21 years, simply allowed our non-general funds to be eaten away by inflation while that Commonwealth has grown by two million people, and the number of Virginia drivers has increased by 74 percent.  I hope we can enact a plan that puts the entire state on solid footing for the next twenty years, and not simply a bill to get us through the November elections.