Wrong turn on tunnel deal

By Kenneth C. Alexander

Public opposition to the plan to have a private company construct highway and tunnel facilities in Norfolk and Portsmouth has been overwhelming - and for good reason. The new facilities will be paid for largely on the backs of drivers who use the Downtown and Midtown tunnels that were built with tolls.

Opponents are justifiably upset by the agreement between the Virginia Department of Transportation and Elizabeth River Crossings, the private company that will build the new facilities and operate those as well as the old facilities. That agreement raises serious concerns.

It's one thing for users to pay for a new highway facility with tolls limited to the legitimate costs of constructing and operating it. It's another thing to force users of a highway facility that they have already paid for to pay tolls in order to fund construction of another facility.

That's only part of the story. The individuals who make decisions about classifications of users and the amount of the toll each classification will pay are not accountable to the users, the public or elected local officials. None of those decision-makers from the private company and VDOT is an elected official, but those decision-makers will exercise broad discretion that should be exercised only by elected officials.

The agreement between VDOT and the private company allows the company to require every vehicle to pay tolls only electronically. Cash payments will not be allowed. Any driver without a transponder will be required to pay a substantial penalty, regardless of the circumstances.

One of the most serious objections to the agreement is that it limits the Virginia General Assembly's ability to impose taxes on the private company. This offends the rule that legislative discretion to tax cannot be restricted by agreement.

The private company is also assured that if any new rail or highway facility draws vehicles - and, hence, revenues from the company - it will be compensated by the commonwealth. Those payments would be in addition to the more than $350 million that the state will pay the company.

The agreement will harm not only the users of the Downtown and Midtown tunnels but also the two cities that are connected by them. The tolls on the two tunnels are burdensome in the extreme. Commuters will pay $3.68 a day during rush hour. Trucks will be hit with $14.72 in tolls for traveling back and forth each day.

And the tolls will continue to rise over the more than five decades of the term of the agreement. This is certain to slow economic activity in both cities.

There is no question that commuters using the tunnels will be subsidizing other drivers using the new facilities to be constructed by the private company. Beyond the unfairness of this arrangement, we have to question why VDOT decided to proceed with this new construction using a Public Private Transportation Act agreement instead of using tax revenues that usually fund such projects.

The answer is probably that the administration preferred to have VDOT and the company negotiate an agreement that involved the subsidy payments by current users of the tunnels rather than draw on tax revenues in VDOT's construction fund. That is a judgment that should have been made by the General Assembly, not VDOT.

Instead of moving forward on transportation projects in the traditional way, which is an open process involving elected officials and tax revenues, we are now turning to agreements between VDOT and private companies that are negotiated beyond public scrutiny.

What is a bad deal for our cities is likely to be a pattern that will spread to other parts of the commonwealth. It needs to be reversed.

Kenneth C. Alexander, a Norfolk Democrat, serves in the Virginia House of Delegates. Email: kennycalexander@aol.com.