RICHMOND
--The state Senate yesterday approved a bill to raise the gas tax 6 cents statewide.On a party-line vote, the Senate approved 21 to 16 Sen. Dick Saslaw's bill to increase road funding by raising the gas tax a penny a year for six years. Saslaw's bill also raises the state sales tax a quarter percent, while removing a half-cent tax on food, and adds a half-cent to the current 3 percent tax on vehicle sales.
It contains other region-specific provisions to provide extra funding for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
"I don't know any way out of this without raising and spending money," Saslaw said. "I don't know how you solve transportation problems of the magnitude we have in this state with no money."
Democrats say the state must increase revenue to pay for increasing maintenance costs that are eating into the construction budget, while many Republicans want to focus tax increases only on Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
Republicans argued against Saslaw's bill, saying the current bad economic climate makes this a bad time to raise any taxes.
Sen. Tommy Norment, R-James City, said legislators are wasting their time trying to forge a consensus in the heat of a session, when there should have been consensus before the session was called.
"I am not afraid to increase taxes, but this is not the time, it is not the place, and every one of you in this room knows, it is not going to happen," Norment said. "If we are ever going to do something on transportation, we have got to forge the consensus before we get here. This is one of the most insurmountable policy issues that we have been confronted with in the history of the commonwealth, not just because of the partisanship but because of the economy."
Embedded in Saslaw's bill is also a provision that would raise the sales tax by 1 cent in the Fredericksburg and Richmond metropolitan regions, for transportation uses. That provision comes from Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, who wants the Fredericksburg area to have its own regional funding similar to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
Eventually, Houck's plan would raise about $42 million a year for the Fredericksburg region.
Houck said he feels like the Saslaw bill is a good one that provides necessary revenues for transportation along with some tax relief. "This was a good package," he said after the vote. "A penny a year on gasoline will be hardly noticed by motorists."
Sen. Richard Stuart, R-Westmoreland, voted against Saslaw's bill. He said he doesn't oppose a gas tax increase, but that the wording of a mass-transit portion of Saslaw's bill would have taken money from regions outside areas serviced by mass-transit options.
Saslaw's bill is unlikely to find favor in the House of Delegates, where Republicans have made it clear they don't support tax increases for roads.
While the House has not voted on any tax increase bills yet, the plan proposed by Gov. Tim Kaine--which raises other taxes and fees, not the gas tax--got a hearing in the House Rules committee yesterday.
The committee didn't vote on the bill, but the tone of questions from Republican members to sponsor Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, and Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer suggests Kaine's bill will be killed.
The Republicans interrupted Homer's presentation of Kaine's plan to question his agency's figures on how much of a deficit the maintenance fund is running, and to argue against raising taxes on car and home sales--two industries hard-hit by the current economic problems.
Representatives from those industries also spoke against Kaine's bill.
Republicans also reiterated their proposal that VDOT be subjected to an external audit.
"Before we write a check to VDOT for a billion dollars a year, ought we not to know what it's being spent on?" asked House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford.
Armstrong said VDOT has been the subject of some kind of audit every year for the past eight years, and has undergone serious reforms in that time.
"If we want to spend a lot of time trying to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we can put this off and try to determine that," Armstrong said. "Does anybody not think that we have a problem with the maintenance reserve? We do. We do have a problem with the maintenance reserve and we're bleeding to death. You do all the audits in the world you want to do, it's not going to change the amount of money that's going into VDOT."
The House Rules committee is scheduled to meet again this morning, although Howell would not say whether they plan to vote on Kaine's bill, nor on any of the other bills from House members that haven't yet had a hearing.
Both houses are scheduled to go into session at 10 this morning, but the House session will be merely a formality; the Senate is leaning toward adjourning and going home until Tuesday, said House Majority Leader Del. Morgan Griffith, and if they do, the House will do the same.
That would postpone until next week any serious action on Saslaw's, Kaine's, or other transportation bills.
Chelyen Davis: 804/782-9362
Email: cdavis@freelancestar.com