Virginia senators are organizing a task force in an attempt to find solutions to overcome the state’s transportation ills.

By CHELYEN DAVIS

Date published: 5/20/2005

RICHMOND—Virginia’s senators are taking the state’s transportation issues into their own hands.

Sen. John Chichester, R–Northumberland, announced yesterday that the Senate Finance Committee is forming a transportation task force, which will examine the state’s transportation needs—and how to pay for those needs—and recommend legislation for the 2006 General Assembly session.

Chichester’s announcement came after a report from Virginia Department of Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet that in a few years, all of the state’s road money will be eaten up by maintenance, leaving nothing for the billions of dollars in new construction needs.

The state can’t depend on the general fund for those dollars, Chichester said.

“The amount that we can bleed from the general fund at any point in time won’t make a dent in our transportation problem. And it encourages a dependency that can’t be sustained,” he said. “Between federal deficit reductionand the once-every-decade economic downturn, the general fund will be tightening its belt about the time that our transportation construction program goes belly-up. When that happens, transportation should not be competing with education and health care. We need a transportation system for the 21st century that has sure footing.”

In addition to Chichester, nine other senators will be on the study group, as well as 15 citizen members.

Spotsylvania Democrat Sen. Edd Houck is one of the members.

Houck said revenue will most definitely be part of the group’s deliberations.

“The primary task is identifying ways to pay for these transportation improvements,” he said, and to “develop a consensus that the problem is significant enough that the public is willing to pay for it.”

The study group is something Sen. Charles Hawkins, R–Pittsylvania, proposed as a bill during this year’s legislative session. It failed, but senators are proceeding with the idea anyway.

“It’s time to discuss transportation, warts and all,” he said.

Hawkins said Virginia has been trying to force a 1950s-era transportation system to support 21st century needs.

He said the state’s economy is at risk if lawmakers do nothing, because moving people and goods around congested areas like Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads —where the port is a big lure for distribution companies—is becoming impossible.

“Doing nothing in this area will create long-term stagnation, if not decline,” Hawkins said.

Like Houck, Hawkins said revenue has to be part of the discussion, and both said that the state cannot continue to rely so heavily on the gasoline tax to pay for transportation improvements, as vehicles become more fuel-efficient and hybrids become more popular.

During the 2004 session, the Senate Finance Committee—led by Chichester—proposed a transportation package that included a gas tax increase and would have raised about $850 million more a year for transportation.

But it was part of a larger tax package, and amid a fight over that with the House of Delegates, senators let the transportation piece of the tax package fall by the wayside.

But Chichester and others have made it clear since then that they are just biding their time and waiting for the appropriate moment to introduce another major transportation initiative.

Taking the 2004 proposal off the table “did not diminish the need for transportation reform,” Chichester said.

The new Statewide Transportation Analysis and Recommendation Task Force will have its first meeting in September.

To reach CHELYEN DAVIS: 804/782-9362 cdavis@freelancestar.com

Date published: 5/20/2005