The Virginian-Pilot
©
NORFOLK
Gov. Bob McDonnell announced a plan Thursday to raise new money for fixing and building roads for the second consecutive year without increasing taxes.
A cornerstone of the proposal, which he will present to the General Assembly next month, is dedicating a greater percentage of the state sales tax to transportation, specifically earmarked for maintaining existing roads.
"Transportation investment really is about job creation and economic development, and that's my top priority," McDonnell told a gathering of nearly 1,000 at the Governor's Transportation Conference at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott.
McDonnell wants to gradually increase the portion of the sales tax for transportation from the existing 0.5 percentage points (half a cent) to 0.75 percentage points (three-quarters of a cent) over the next eight years and dedicate it to road maintenance. For the upcoming budget, it would go to 0.55 percentage points, generating more than $110 million. The state sales tax is 5 percent.
Maintenance has increasingly been eating into the state transportation budget as needs grow and revenue has stagnated. State law mandates that maintenance needs get funded before new construction.
In recent years, that amount has ranged from about $450 million to more than $500 million each year. Since 2005, the construction budget has been shorted $2.8 billion to cover maintenance.
Other proposed measures are:
- Taking the first 1 percent of revenue growth in excess of 5 percent for transportation. Each percentage point amounts to about $150 million. The state has had growth greater than 5 percent one out of every three years.
- Increasing transportation's share of year-end budget surpluses to 75 percent. Over the past two years, $100 million in surplus money went to transportation.
- Implementing a form of tax-increment financing so that transportation receives a portion of tax revenues that result from economic development surrounding major new infrastructure projects.
- Expanding VDOT's revenue sharing program so that the state matches local money on not only capital improvements but also maintenance projects.
The Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club opposes dedicating more of the sales tax to transportation.
"The governor will be cutting scarce dollars in the general fund used for other important core functions of state government such as environmental protection and education," David Dickson, transportation program manager, said in a statement. "The way to achieve more sustainable funding for needed transportation infrastructure maintenance is to raise the gasoline tax, which has not been raised since 1986, not rob other vital programs."
Debbie Messina, (757) 446-2588, debbie.messina@pilotonline.com
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Thanks to all the government
Thanks to all the government employer or governors, because those are arranged a vital program for good transportation. This is the very important thing of our daily life, if some persons have no transportation to go any other place, so it is not good. If you are in house and you are ill now, so how you go to hospital, then you call to hospital for their transportation service. Really this blogs concept is too good.
http://www.pegasustransit.com/
Roads
When the Virginia Department of Transportation gets all of this extra money from every Virginian I hope they cut the funds for the City of Suffolk. The City of Suffolk gets Millions and Millions for road maintenance because VDOT does not maintain the roads in Suffolk anymore. The roads are so full of potholes that just filling them in would not solve anything. This is a sweet deal for the City of Suffolk and a losing deal for the Citizens of Suffolk and the Citizens of Virginia.
Funnel or siphon?
"A cornerstone of the proposal, which he will present to the General Assembly next month, is dedicating a greater percentage of the state sales tax to transportation, specifically earmarked for maintaining existing roads."
Using more sales tax money for transportation. This will mean that more moneys will go to construction companies, more tolls will be imposed to pay for them, going to private investors, of course, and so education and other needed projects deemed unnecessary by the GOPT will suffer.
Sounds like siphoning rather than funnelling to me.
OK, now it is obvious;
OK, now it is obvious; stealing money from education to put into transportation is not leadership. It is the act of a conjurer. Borrowing three billion with no way to pay it back was an act of desperation, not leadership.
pretend to not rasie taxes
while a toll is a tax under a different spelling.
Seems like to me
the simplest way to fix this is lock down the transporation funds so they cannot be used for anything else. We seem to forget that every year the general assembly has this knack for once funding the budget, is to strip from transporation funds, and send it to their pet projects. It was tried years ago to lock the fund so it cannot be used for anything else but failed. Why?, because they are politicians whose goal to do what they want, not what the people want. And don't pay much attentionto the Sierra Club, they are a PAC like any others, and all the want is what they want, they don't look out for you either. So lock the funds for transporation only, and you should have money to do what you want, and raise the gax tax to 25 cents.
Genius
The governor is going to reduce funding to schools and colleges, continue reduced staffing at state agencies, and continue to under pay state employees, so that people who choose to drive huge, expensive gas hog SUVs won't have to pay more for gasoline? How ingenius!
Oh what a tangled web we weave...
What ever happened to the acronym or maxim KISS?
The simplest method to generate revenues for transportation is the gas tax. With the weekly fluctuations in cost per gallon, would this be noticed?
More Political Gimmicks
At the conference Governor McDonnell also noted that the revenues from the Gas Tax fall short of meeting Virginia's infrastructure needs due to inflation and improved fuel economy.
But No Politician Will Dare Raise the Gas Tax
So the Governor is going to use accounting gimmicks to make it appear as though he is solving the problem, but by using more money from the Sale Tax revenues he will just be creating a short-fall somewhere else.
If you use all the money in your left pocket you do not become richer by taking money out of your right pocket.
Note: The Gas Tax was set at the current 17.5c in 1987 but to maintain the same roads it would need to be about 33c today, thanks to inflation.
I agree with you 100%
Let's raise the gas tax to 33 cents and move on with our lives!