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Power in numbers
There has been little to smile about on the transportation front for years, but we're encouraged by what appears to be a burgeoning relationship between legislators from Northern Virginia and their traffic-choked colleagues from Hampton Roads.
In hopes of gaining some much-needed transportation funding for their respective regions, lawmakers representing both groups spent time last week exploring ways to form what Del. Paula Miller (D-Norfolk) dubbed "the new urban majority."
Miller's words serve as a not-so-subtle warning to lawmakers in rural Virginia who have been holding commuters in Fairfax and Tidewater hostage
for the better part of a decade.
Truth be told, they should have spoken a lot sooner.
The partnership's first real test will come next month when Gov. Tim Kaine (D) convenes a special session to consider new transportation funding formulas. For the umpteenth year in a row, lawmakers will be asked to weigh statewide taxes to fund highway maintenance. They'll also be asked to authorize regional transportation districts to allow places like Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to generate their own revenue for roads.
While legislators from the state's two most populous and congested regions don't have enough votes to secure funding themselves, they're getting closer every day. With exponential population growth in both areas, several legislative seats will shift from counties like Grayson and Nottoway to Loudoun and Prince William when district lines are redrawn in 2011. That should go a long way to addressing our road needs. It should also help our universities and businesses.
The hope here is that we won't have to wait three years for attitudes – and votes – to shift. By now, every legislator in the state knows that tax revenue generated in Fairfax and Norfolk underwrites critical programs and services across the state.
None of this is rocket science. If Virginia's “cash cows” continue to go without dinner, the entire state will starve.
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