Governor Tim Kaine just released his transportation plan - a mix of funding, land use, and other proposals. If you believe the rhetoric coming from the House Republicans ...
In a news release, House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, said Kaine's plan was simply more of the same. "Frankly, I believe everyone involved in and impacted by Virginia's transportation challenges hoped the governor would put in the effort to develop a new plan and not reintroduce statewide tax and fee increases ....... and the sloppy media ...
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) proposed raising state taxes and fees yesterday by almost $1 billion a year for transportation....... you'd think that our Governor was about to tax every nook and cranny of our lives to fund his transportation plan.
He's not. His revenue proposal would barely affect everyday - or even every-year - Virginia life. The new funding from the average Virginian doesn't even hit $500 million - not the $1 billion figure misleadingly headlined by the Post.
Let's take a deeper look, shall we?
Here's Tim Kaine's funding proposal for his transportation plan:
G求 Permanently dedicates existing auto insurance premium taxes to transportation, a law enacted in 2000 but only followed twice.Since the first prong is a rededication of existing revenue, it's irrelevant to the "new taxes and fees" debate where the Republican obstructionists in House of Delegates are drawing their line in the sand.G求 Equalizes the sales tax on vehicles to equal the sales tax for other non-food items. VirginiaG侵s current 3% motor vehicle sales and use tax rate is 44th lowest in the country. Maryland, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Tennessee are all at least 5%.
G求 Imposes an abuser fee on motorists who drive under the influence, drive recklessly, or commit certain other offenses.
G求 Increases the registration fee for vehicles from the current $29.50 to $44.50 in 2007, and $49.50 in 2010.
G求 Increases the registration fee on heavy trucks, commensurate with the increase on automobiles.
So, let's look at these parts of Kaine's proposal. First, the sales tax on motor vehicle items would increase by another 2%. This aspect of the plan would be somewhat progressive - with the total tax paid by a consumer increasing with the price of the car. In other words, those buying a luxury car would pay more than those buying an mid-priced family sedan. I believe that tiered increases for regular and luxury cars would have been even better - that way the increase has a greater impact on those who can afford it more. Just to illustrate my point, an example would be a 1% increase for vehicles priced under $25,000 and a 3% increase for all other vehicles.
Regardless, the car sales tax is one that consumers would pay only every once in a while. Very few people buy a car every year or even every other year - heck, some people only buy a car once a decade. So this proposed tax increase (let's say $400 for a total car price of about $20,000) is one that consumers would rarely pay. And, of course, the tax is directly targeted to the users of the transportation infrastructure - every time someone buys a car, their tax payment is directly allocated to transportation funding.
Indeed, this is exactly what the Governor is thinking:
[Kaine] said it made sense because the sales tax on other goods was 5 percent."Why would you have the sales tax on autos less than any other physical good at a time when we're going around saying we need to find money for transportation?" he asked.
If a consumer good's sale tax is lower than the state sales rate, but that good is causing a funding crisis - it sounds like it makes sense to bring that good in line with the general tax rate to fix that crisis.
Next, let's look at the other increase - the registration fees. Of course, this fee increase will affect Virginians every year and for every car. But look at the actual fee increase - we're talking $15 per car! Only $20 per car after 2009! A two-car household would face only a $30 hit in their annual budget for the rest of this decade. (The increase for heavy trucks would be weight-based and track the car fee increase). And, again, this minor increase is directly targeted at the users of the transportation infrastructure - indeed, this looks like a fee to use the state-maintained roads and highways.
Finally, the increases penalties on aggressive drivers wouldn't affect most of us. Rather, those drivers who often cause the traffic delays by clogging lanes with dangerous maneuvers and accidents are rightly paying a heavier price for the harms they cause to transportation flow. So, if you're a normal drive, no need to worry about this one. This is a penalty on certain bad apples - not a state-wide tax or fee on everybody that uses the transportation grid.
So, in the end, the real statewide tax and fee increases would total $492.9 million for FY 2008 -- not $1 billion as reported by the Post -- and rises steadily as car sales and registrations increase after that. And, on an individual level for the everyday Virginian, we're talking a few dozen bucks a year in fees ...
Most Virginia drivers would pay about $20 more in years when they don't buy a new car, [Kaine] said.... and a few hundred dollars more in the rare year that a person does purchase a new car. No income tax increase. No general sales tax increase. No gas tax increase. Just the rare increase for the purchase and the small increase for the continued ownership of the machine that is causing the transportation crisis to begin with.
Now, I'm not acting like this is nothing. Kaine is raising $500-600 million a year with these increases. And for some people, money is tight - so a more progressive plan would've been my preference.
But Kaine's plan also isn't taxation armageddon as depicted by the House Republicans and the media. Is Howell and Co. really willing to go down fighting - to obstruct transportation reform one more time - over these minor increases?
We need local opportunities, sustainable, sensible economic development, and inter-modal rail improvements. I-81 between Mileposts 200 and 75 is a kill-zone. This plan does little to address the problems of rural drivers, and that is why Howell and Morgan painlessly ignore the Governor.
But at least it is a reasoned start. The Republicans have less than nothing, witness Senate Transportation Chairman, Senator Marty Williams (R-NewportNews). The guy is the definition of "clueless fool".
Williams himself has authored a different approach. He wants to eliminate the 17.5-cent-a-gallon state gas tax and increase the sales tax 1 percentage point, dedicated to transportation.With auto manufacturers pushing fuel efficiency and hybrid vehicles becoming more popular, he said, the gas tax has lost its effectiveness as a revenue source.
The sales tax grows as the economy grows, which would be a way to generate more revenue each year without raising the tax rate.
"We've got to get off the per-gallon gas tax," he said.
While I agree that it would be nice if the revenue could be tied to the problem (as opposed to an overall tax increase), I also agree that stiffer fines for some violations needs to be examined closely for its potential ripple down effects. Out here where I am I KNOW they would drive anyway. They have no choice if they want to keep their jobs.
ALL areas of the Commonwealth have problems, not just NoVA.
I agree with Kaine's proposal in theory but would also like to know if there aren't some other things/ideas that could be dedicated/imposed to solve the problems. At least it gets the ball rolling.
BTW, my youngest daughter graduated from Radford. I was never so glad in my life when she did because I no longer had to drive the "kill zone"....
I encourage everyone to re-examine their lifestyles and adapt. A cursory review of VDOT's budget projections for maintenance alone brings me to the conclusion that there will be no good solution - other than less driving and mass transport. We simply can't affort the status quo any longer. There is not enough citizen support for funding.
One consequence of stiffer fines is that more fines will go unpaid. Then people will get their driver's licenses suspended. Then they will drive anyway, so if they get caught, there will be more jail time to do. If they have an accident, they won't be insured, so victims who do not have violations will have to get their uninsured motorists' insurance to pay. Or if the uninsured person hits a pedestrian, maybe there will be no insurance available at all.
Another consequence of relying on stiffer fines to balance the budget is that it sets up some interesting management issues. "Officer Jones -- we haven't met our revenue targets for this year. Don't investigate that burglary -- we need you to go catch speeders." (This has happened in some counties where they rely on local ordinance violation fines as a revenue line item for the county budget.)
And don't think that the notion of a higher fine will deter aggressive driving -- people who are driving aggressively are doing so because they aren't thinking about consequences. Even if they were conscious of the fact that a fine that had been $100 is now $200 (as a hypothetical example), I can guarantee that that knowledge will not be taken into account when the decision is made to speed.
It is clear that the idea of higher fines is the old adage of "Don't tax you, don't tax me; tax the fellow behind the tree."
I haven't seen the specifics of Governor Kaine's proposals to raise revenue by hiking fines, but I think it would be a lot more intellectually honest just to say, "We're raising gas taxes by a dime." If that were to have the collateral consequence of discouraging gas consumption, that would be a GOOD collateral consequence.
Now, addressing the "quota" argument (officers busting people for revenue rather than for law enforcement), I not sure about this. But, if this money is going directly into state coffers (rather than localities), maybe cops don't have the same incentives as they do with speeding tickets. I think you're implying that cops might be directed to increase such arrests to increase revenue - and perhaps be less likely to deal with other crimes. If so, such concerns are implementation issues that can be addressed to make sure this doesn't happen - directives from state and city officials to prevent such use of law enforcement - and these concerns (I don't think) do not go to the heart of the plan itself.
Finally, the unpaid fines issue - It sounds like the end bad result you envision is a rise in uninsured motorists. It's tough to tell if this will happen. I personally don't believe that these drivers will abide by fines at one price but not at a slightly higher price. Perhaps there's a breaking point where fines become too expensive for reasonable law breakers to realistically pay, but I don't think Kaine's plan will go over that line. We'll have to see when those details come out, though.
The two wild cards are what the senate wants and what traction any regional funding districts might generate
My point on the number of uninsured drivers is not one of deterrence or thought -- indeed, my experience as a criminal defense lawyer is that most of my clients commit their crimes because they are NOT thinking. (As your oxymoronic phrase "a reasonable lawbreaker" highlights.) My point is that if it is harder to be a legal driver, more people will be illegal drivers. I have rarely noticed that anything short of a major sentence (60 days or more) deters suspended drivers from driving; they don't think about fines anyway. So you have people who are unable to pay their fines, who have their licenses suspended as a result. I wish that meant that they stopped driving, but history suggests that they do not. And with no meaningful mass transit in most of the Commonwealth, that should not really be surprising.
A driver whose license is suspended cannot register a vehicle, and cannot get it insured. So now we have more unregistered and uninsured vehicles being driven by people whose bad driving is why the vehicle is unregistered and uninsured in the first place.
I would rather we had a response to driving on a suspended license that emphasized real deterrence -- jail for a first offense -- than money. (I can say that here, but obviously I can't say that in court or my clients would like at me like I was nuts.) I'd save fines for such things for the costs of maintaining the prosecution. I want poor people to have fewer barriers to being legal, not more barriers to being legal.
As for the "quota" issue -- Virginia State Police troopers hand out most of the traffic charges in most of the counties in Virginia. There have been times (I hope not at the moment) when State troopers had performance reviews based on the number of tickets they had written. Now we'd just be taking this to a different level.
Finally, the notion that those convicted of "aggressive driving" (just to take one example) use the resource more intensely doesn't really follow. The pavement does not deteriorate any faster if a VW bug drives at 90 than if it drives at 60. If you want to really set up a system that is calibrated to wear and tear on the roads, make the registration fees every year a function of vehicle weight. Or miles driven. (Though actually, when you think about it, a gas tax is in fact a crude way of calibrating to the miles driven, throwing in an incentive to economize).
I am sure that we'll end up with some combination of things like this, if only because it is politically palatable. But not because it makes sense.
Good point re state troopers - a directive would be needed to prevent this from happening. We don't want to create roving "tax collectors" hunting for revenue.
Finally, my point re aggressive drivers using the resources more was my sloppy way of saying that these drivers cause accidents, which causes much of the gridlock. I didn't mean the use more asphalt, just that their driving uses more road space by causing pile-ups.
Your last point is also a good one - the compromises involved in the end will twist sense to move to what is politically palatable. But, hopefully, such a solution will be better than nothing.
Good opinons have been stressed here. What about your Delegates. Especially them, since they are the problem, not the solution.