Since former Governor Jim Gilmore (1998 to 2002) could very well be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate next year against Mark Warner, I've been poking around a bit at his record. One article I came across was "Reading Jim Gilmore's Mind" by Paul Goldman, written back in November 2002, the day before the Northern Virginia Transportation Tax referendum (remember that?). It's still spot-on about Jim Gilmore (written from the perspective of Gilmore's own mind):
...I am Mr. No Tax in Virginia, I fought for four years to keep a transportation tax referendum off the NOVA ballot.So I had to oppose it. Once Sen. Allen came out against the tax increase, people could no longer say it was Gilmore trying to embarrass Warner or my being mad at all the things Warner has been saying about my mismanagement of VDOT, my busting the budget.
Uh, Governor? It's not just Mark Warner saying that you mismanaged VDOT (and the Department of Environmental Quality, and Juvenile Justice, and many other agencies). The fact is, you did mismanage our state, nearly driving it into a fiscal ditch during your disastrous four years in the governor's mansion.
As Democratic Central pointed out on August 7:
In the Allen and Gilmore years, VDOT was colossally mismanaged. (For more on this, Google "VDOT" and "mismanagement".) During that time, gas tax dollars were being wasted. Then Mark Warner came in and cleaned house. Since then, with Warner and Tim Kaine running the show, VDOT is coming back under control. The Mixing Bowl was finally finished. Now it's time to turn to some of the maintenance needs that have been ignored for too long.
Great stuff, huh? Oh, and I did as Democratic Central suggested and Googled "VDOT" and "mismanagement." I quickly found this, from July 2002, not long after Mark Warner took over the Governor's mansion from Gilmore:
Governor Warner ordered an audit of the agency's finances after he took office in January and discovered that VDOT could not answer basic questions about its financial accounts. Severe mismanagement forced VDOT to remove $3 billion of projects from its original $10.7 billion six-year transportation plan last month
Great stuff, huh? Quite a record of accomplishment for Jim Gilmore. Now he wants us to elect him again? Not.