What will happen? Nothing but wasted tax dollars this summer--at best, the special session will end with a deal nobody likes, one that saddles northern Virginians with the task of taxing themselves with little or no help from the state government that this region so lavishly subsidizes.And then it's back to politics: Democrats will say, see, if you just finish the job and give us the House too, we can get past this Republican roadblock and get the construction work underway. Republicans will say, see, we're your only safeguard against those tax-loving Democrats. That appeal has worked for the GOP in the past, but times, conditions and demographics have changed and Democrats are increasingly convinced that one more election cycle is all they need to gain the power to break the transportation stalemate.
It's not quite that easy, however. The real divide in Virginia is neither ideological nor partisan, but rather geographic and cultural. It really is NoVa vs. RoVa (the rest of Virginia.)
And that battle may take some years to play out. In the meantime, there may be other solutions to the $4 gas situation: Former Gov. Jim Gilmore, who is running against former Gov. Mark Warner for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by John Warner, pronounces himself so enamored of drilling for oil in our own country that he's willing to have oil companies come over and drill in his own backyard in suburban Richmond.
Now there's a classic Virginia solution: Next from Richmond, selling the drilling rights to the Beltway, I-95 and the state's other major thoroughfares. Who needs tolls when we can let the oil companies make us money from our own roads?