10/7/04-A state senator is looking to drum up support for his plan to revive transportation funding in the state.
Sen. John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, who led this year’s campaign to increase spending on Virginia’s traffic problems, is calling on politicians and the public to rally behind new efforts to fund roadwork.
Chichester, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, spoke in Tysons Corner, VA, Sept. 30 about the need for greater investment, increased coordination with developers on land-use decisions and more creativity in finding solutions.
During the 2004 General Assembly session, he proposed raising an assortment of fees to increase transportation funding by $800 million a year, but the plan was dropped.
Chichester told The Washington Post he would favor raising a range of “user fees” during the legislative session that begins in January to generate revenue for road and rail projects. But he declined to say whether he would push a plan as ambitious as his previous one.
He also called for developers to bear more of the burden for road costs and perhaps maintain roads in new subdivisions for five years or more after they are built. Those roads now are turned over to the Virginia Transportation Department after one year and contribute to the agency’s rising maintenance costs, he said.
Chichester is one of several officials pursuing ways to solve the state’s transportation problems. House Speaker William Howell, R-Fredericksburg, has appointed a committee of Republican delegates to come up with ideas. Democratic Gov. Mark Warner has said he is developing a plan, and others want to raise fuel taxes to fund projects.

9/21/04-Improving Virginia’s roads and bridges is expected to figure prominently in next year’s race for the governor’s seat.
With that in mind, the two likely gubernatorial candidates are beginning to craft plans to improve the state’s transportation network.
Lt. Gov. Timothy Kaine and Attorney General Jerry Kilgore have not outlined comprehensive plans on how they would fund road and rail projects, but they have started laying out some basic ideas.
Both men said Sept. 17 they would support a proposal for an amendment to the state constitution to prevent the government from dipping into its transportation trust fund for other purposes, The Washington Post reported. The fund’s revenue, which contains $815 million, has been used on three occasions in the past 15 years for purposes other than transportation.
Kilgore and Kaine each have said the practice diminishes public confidence that money earmarked for public transportation is being used properly.
Both candidates also have said they oppose hiking the state’s motor fuel tax to fund rail and road projects, a plan that was floated and ultimately fell flat during the 2004 General Assembly session.
Kilgore, a Republican, said he is looking to establish public-private partnerships and expand high-occupancy toll lane projects, which would allow commuters to either carpool or pay a fee to bypass slower traffic.
He said he would also like to increase incentives for Northern Virginians to ride Metro as well as look at the possibility of increasing tolls to raise money for roads.
“There are other ways of funding projects besides raising taxes,” Kilgore told The Post.
Democratic candidate Kaine also has said his transportation proposals would encourage better land-use planning.
“Transportation will be the biggest issue that the next governor and the Legislature will have to face when they are sworn in January 2006,” Kaine said.

9/15/04-A group of Republican state lawmakers from northern Virginia touted a plan Wednesday, Sept. 13, to use the state’s budget surplus to produce $5 billion over 20 years for road and rail projects.
The lawmakers said at a press conference in Vienna, VA, they expect at least a $700 million surplus in the next two years, and they want to lay claim to the money for badly needed transportation projects.
Their proposal also is intended as a pre-emptive strike against leading Democrats who support a fuel tax increase to fund new projects.
“People will be lined up to divvy up that $700 million,” Delegate Tim Hugo, R-Fairfax, told The Associated Press. “Under this plan, we’re saying that the $700 million is going to be dedicated to transportation.”
In reality, the $5 billion in transportation projects would be funded by dedicating the state’s tax on insurance premiums to road and rail work and borrowing against the stream of revenue. The surplus would be used to restock the general fund for the lost insurance taxes.
Delegate Vincent Callahan, R-Fairfax, said using the surplus to issue bonds and borrow is a better option than hiking fuel taxes, because the bonds would give the state $5 billion almost immediately to jumpstart stalled projects. A fuel tax, however, raises only $45 million for each penny increase, meaning a 10-cent or 20-cent boost would be needed to provide any significant funds.
“And it’s just not in the cards to raise it 10 cents, 20 cents,” Callahan said.

1/21/04-Gov. Mark Warner said Jan. 20 that he remains open to the idea of increasing fuel taxes in Virginia, but will fight efforts to divert other revenue from the state’s transportation fund.
Warner said his tax reform plan would boost Virginia’s road-building budget by more than $1.3 billion over the next six years and eliminate the need for raiding the transportation trust fund to pay for other programs.
“We have to put the trust back in the transportation trust fund,” Warner told reporters at a press conference in Richmond.
The bulk of the additional funding would come from an existing tax on auto insurance premiums. Lawmakers voted in 2000 to earmark those funds for transportation projects, but the tax proceeds have often been diverted to other programs to balance the budget.
Warner said the revenue generated by his package of tax code changes would stabilize the state’s general fund and eliminate the need for raiding the transportation fund, the newspaper reported. The governor proposed increasing the state sales tax on goods by a penny on the dollar, reducing the sales tax on groceries and revamping the income tax structure as part of a plan that would generate more than $1 billion in new revenue over the next two years.
The governor’s two-year, $59 billion budget proposal includes $392 million in new transportation funding.
Several legislators have proposed increasing the state’s fuel tax to raise additional money for highways, but Warner said that’s not necessary.
“I’ve tried to present a plan that allows us to keep our commitments and meet our core obligations,” said Warner, although he added that he is keeping an open mind on a fuel tax increase.
“Clearly the needs in transportation are enormous,” Warner said.