Gov. Kaine to call for special General Assembly session

Associated Press
Published: May 7, 2008

Updated 4:53 p.m.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is calling the General Assembly into special session beginning June 23 to consider a new transportation funding package, legislators said Wednesday.
Del. Thomas D. Rust disclosed the date to a gathering of Democratic and Republican legislators from Hampton Roads and northern Virginia called to discuss legislation.
Kaine’s office refused to comment on the report, but did not deny the date.
The governor had disclosed last week he intended to convene the House and Senate the final two weeks of June. He had alerted the legislative Democrats to his plans earlier this week.
He will ask lawmakers to consider statewide taxes to fund highway maintenance and regional transportation districts authorized to generate their own revenue for projects in the state’s two most populous and congested regions.
The session comes in response to legislation less than one year old that created separate authorities with power to levy taxes for road projects in Hampton Roads and northern Virginia.
It also comes a day after 25 of the most potent lobbying organizations in Richmond representing retailers, developers, real estate agents, contractors, school teachers and localities called for increases in the sales tax or the gasoline tax or perhaps both to pay for road maintenance.
Both of the regional plans were voided by a unanimous state Supreme Court ruling on Feb. 29 that they were unconstitutional because they were imposed by unelected authorities.
Another provision of the law that levied steep surcharges on abusive traffic violators was hurriedly repealed in March after Virginians were outraged to discover the fees did not apply to nonresidents.
The punitive fees, in force for only nine months, never approached the $65 million they were intended to generate annually for statewide road maintenance.
At a candid and informal discussion session in a tony suburban office park, legislators spoke bluntly of the need to not only raise new statewide revenue for soaring costs of upkeep and repair of roads, but the urgent need for new transportation projects in their urban and suburban regions.
Partisan disagreements and regional ones are enormous impediments to a compromise.
“We are the new urban majority,” said Del. Paula Miller, D-Norfolk, articulating a shared sentiment among the lawmakers that rural areas must help pay for the needs.
“We have some political muscle here and it’s time we flex it,” she said. “The patience of Hampton Roads residents is running out.”
With enormous population growth in northern Virginia and strong growth in Hampton Roads, several legislative seats will shift to those areas from rural parts of the state when district lines are redrawn in three years.
Revenue the robust economies of northern Virginia and Hampton Roads generate constitutes much of the state budget and underwrites a large share of the programs and services the state provides statewide.
“We’ve got to tell our rural friends that they’ve got to help us or there will be serious consequences,” Rust said.
But the costs are high and rising. A proposed companion to the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel that links Hampton on the Peninsula with Norfolk alone will top $1.5 billion.
Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said Tuesday that Kaine welcomed recommendations from the 25 lobbying interest groups for the 1 percent sales tax boost and an increase in the 17.5-cent state gasoline tax. They are among the menu of options Kaine has said he is considering for a bill he will offer lawmakers next month to pay for upkeep and repair of state roads and bridges. He also said he is considering raising the 3 percent sales tax on cars to match the 5 percent tax on all other retail sales.
Republican leaders in the House have rejected new statewide tax increases, calling them unnecessary and untimely in the current poor economy.
Republican Dels. Phillip Hamilton and David Albo cautioned fellow legislators to keep that in mind as they brainstorm about taxes.
“Absent some agreement between the two chambers, ... the ideas I’ve heard being talked about will not get out of committee in the House of Delegates,” Hamilton said.
Albo acknowledged that any successful bill will have to have statewide maintenance funding, as Kaine and Senate Democratic Leader Richard L. Saslaw demand, and regional revenue plans, as House Speaker William J. Howell and other GOP leaders insist.
“Dick Saslaw is not wrong. He’s not lying when he says there’s a problem with maintenance funding,” Albo said. “And the speaker is not wrong when he says `We just raised taxes a few years ago and now we’re out of money - where does it end?“‘
Del. Kenneth Alexander, D-Norfolk, was more specific in identifying the legislative hurdle likely to halt any new statewide tax: the House Finance Committee, stacked with antitax Republicans.
“This committee is designed to do one thing: kill taxes and fees,” Alexander said.