The 2007 Transportation Bill: A Critical Assessment
RICHMOND – In a news conference held on August 14th Tuesday in the Virginia Capitol, the 2007 Transportation Bill came under heavy criticism for being fundamentally flawed as transportation policy, constitutionally flawed as legislation, and stunningly inept as a political strategy going into an election. The bill, passed with bipartisan support in the General Assembly, has received bipartisan disapproval at the grassroots level. An on-line petition has now collected more than 171,000 signatures of citizens who demand the repeal of “abusive driver fees” and who pledge not to vote for “any Delegate or State Senator who voted for this bill, or for any Delegate or Senator who does not take action to repeal the sections of House Bill 3202 that inflict these exorbitant and unjust penalties.”
However, more than just the abusive driver fees component of the legislation came under fire at the news conference. “In a dishonest attempt to fool the voters of Virginia into thinking that they were not raising taxes, our legislators passed one of the worst pieces of legislation in Virginia’s history. This contorted bill is a massive tax increase that will not pass constitutional muster,” said Paul Jost, chairman of the Virginia Club for Growth. “It is time for new leadership in both houses of the General Assembly,” he added.
Also rejecting the tax increases contained within HB 3202, Robert Dean, the cofounder and communications director of the Virginia Beach Taxpayer Alliance, stated, “HB 3202 penalizes folks who buy or build a home close to work with a grantors tax – an additional 40 cents per $100 – which, on the sale of an average Virginia Beach home, will cost the seller $1,800.” Dean concluded, “In a legislature in which the majority party is completely unable to field a leadership team, the Republicans are reduced to relying on more spending and higher taxes as the universal answer to every problem.”
Patrick McSweeney of the Richmond law firm McSweeney, Crump, Childress & Gould, P.C. participated at the news conference to explain the legal bases for the constitutional challenge to the 2007 omnibus transportation legislation that his firm filed in the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond. McSweeney outlined the claims in the lawsuit that the legislation violated the provisions in the Virginia Constitution 1) limiting all statues to a single subject, 2) prohibiting the delegation of taxing power to regional authorities, 3) prohibiting the exaction of impact fees that are not tied to the impact of a new development, 4) prohibiting the issuance of either state or regional tax-supported bonds without voter approval and 5) barring the assessment of civil redial fees that are actually fines as a violation of the due process, double jeopardy, and excessive fines clauses and as a violation of the requirement of the provision that fines be paid into the Literary Fund. Some of the claims are also based on the United States Constitution.
Criticizing the Commonwealth of Virginia’s transportation policy for lacking any coherent goal or objective, Dr. Ron Utt, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, asserted, “What we need is not more money for transportation in the commonwealth, but a performanced-based Virginia Department of Transportation that utilizes quantitative measures of congestion relief and safety based upon the application of cost/benefit analysis to prioritize projects as well as to guide investment among alternative modes of travel.”
Wrapping up the news conference, John Taylor, president of Tertium Quids and host of the Tuesday Morning Group coalition, reacted to comments made last week by a Republican leader in the House of Delegates who said that the citizens voicing opposition to the Transportation Bill are the same anti-tax folks who oppose all progress. “My goodness. In the last five years the federal budget has grown by a trillion dollars. In the last decade the Virginia budget has grown by 120 percent. In communities across the commonwealth, property taxes are growing by double-digit percentages. And yet, despite this explosion in spending and taxing, according to Virginia’s politicians the problem is that we do not have enough layers of government, we do not have enough layers of taxation, and we do not have enough unelected taxing authorities,” responded Taylor. “The 2007 Transportation Bill is fatally flawed for any number of reasons. It needs to be scrapped and we need to start again with the understanding that our first transportation priority in Virginia is congestion relief,” concluded Taylor.