News and Views

Richmond Times-Dispatch : Transportation secretary wants to keep politics out of Virginia road funding

Virginia elected officials thought they had taken politics out of highway funding when they adopted a new way of scoring and ranking transportation projects three years ago.

But maybe not in this election year.

With three statewide offices and the House of Delegates up for grabs in three weeks, a regional spat over highway funding caught fire Monday, as Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr. took aim at Republican political leaders in Southwest Virginia who have accused Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, of doing too little to fund critical road projects in their region.

Layne told the House Appropriations Committee that critics want the state to find more money for the Coalfields Expressway through three Southwest Virginia counties, even though the state already has spent more than $100 million for a related bridge between Virginia and Kentucky that isn’t connected to roads on either side of the border.

“It’s the tallest bridge in Virginia, and it doesn’t connect to anything,” he told the committee, whose members wondered aloud how that could happen.

“Quietly,” answered Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William, who is facing a tough re-election campaign in Northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs.

But nothing is quiet about the politics of road funding in an election season, when advocates for expensive projects outside Virginia’s big urban areas are bumping into the statutory vehicles that state lawmakers put into motion to raise money for transportation and ensure it’s spent on the projects most needed.

“I will take every bit (of money) you give me and use it wisely,” Layne told the committee. “Limited resources have consequences.”

 Layne, a self-professed Republican businessman from Virginia Beach, jumped into the political fray himself this year by contributing $2,500 to the campaign of Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, the Democratic nominee for governor after Republican nominee Ed Gillespie criticized Northam this summer for voting to increase taxes to pay for transportation improvements.

Gillespie back-tracked under GOP criticism for calling a $6 billion funding package adopted in 2013 under legislation sponsored by the state’s two top Republican leaders — then-Gov. Bob McDonnell and House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford — “the largest tax increase in Virginia history.”

The Republican nominee issued a policy paper that vowed to “oppose any effort to roll back” the landmark legislation, which was one reason why the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce recently said it endorsed him.

He also said he supports the merit-based approach of allocating limited transportation dollars through Smart Scale, another initiative sponsored by Howell and strongly supported by McAuliffe, who has worked closely with Republican legislative leaders to implement it.

But those reforms also have raised concerns, especially in outlying parts of Virginia, that the state isn’t putting enough transportation dollars into projects that are political priorities of elected officials in their regions.

Last week, for example, five Republican legislators, led by Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Charles W. “Bill” Carrico, R-Grayson, issued a statement blasting McAuliffe and Northam for not seeking a new federal infrastructure grant to help finance the 49-mile, four-lane Coalfields Expressway.

“Despite efforts made by members of the General Assembly to make the Coalfields Expressway a priority in Richmond, the administration continues to show a willful disregard for the needs of the Coalfields,” said the statement from Carrico; Sen. A. Benton Chafin Jr., R-Russell; Del. Terry G. Kilgore, R-Scott; Del. Todd R. Pillion, R-Washington; and Del. Israel D. O’Quinn, R-Washington.

The legislators accused the administration of reneging on a commitment by Layne earlier this year to ensure that any federal money granted for the project would be exempt from the Smart Scale ranking process.

They said the McAuliffe administration had promised to pursue federal grant funding for the project and yet had not applied for a federal grant from the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America program President Donald Trump created this summer to help fund infrastructure projects.

In a letter to Layne on Friday, Carrico said, “I was both surprised and disappointed to hear that no such application had yet been considered for this project.”

 Layne replied with a letter to Carrico on Monday that challenged statements made by the senator and other legislators. It defended the state’s funding of transportation projects in Southwestern Virginia, including $140 million for the Coalfields Expressway and $102 million for the U.S. 460 Connector Phase I, a bridge in an overlapping highway project called Corridor Q.

“As secretary of transportation, I have a responsibility to make decisions considering the needs of the commonwealth as a whole,” Layne told Carrico. “I know that you view your role as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee in a similar fashion.”

Northam spokesman David Turner said the lieutenant governor “is not involved with the decision making process” on the Coalfields Expressway, even though the Republican legislators aimed their criticism at “the McAuliffe-Northam administration.”

“However, he is committed to revitalizing infrastructure across the commonwealth, which is why he supported the 2013 bipartisan transportation bill,” Turner said, adding that Northam also promises to seek federal money for infrastructure projects in Virginia.

Layne defended the state’s new funding process on Monday. He said every highway district in Virginia received more money than under the old formula and, while fewer projects are added to the state six-year plan, the ones that make the cut are fully funded and completed on time.

House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, one of the architects of the 2013 transportation package, signaled on Monday that he may introduce legislation that would put into law the current Commonwealth Transportation Board policy of ensuring that projects in the six-year plan are “fully constrained,” with funding committed from design through construction.

“Anything you can put into code would be welcomed by the CTB,” Layne replied.”Otherwise, all we’re doing is just shuffling money around.”

Finding the money to complete big projects won’t be easy, but the transportation secretary said other sources of revenue are key to moving forward on costly projects such as widening Interstate 81 through the Shenandoah Valley to Bristol at a cost he estimated at $10 million a mile, or the Coalfields Expressway at double the cost per mile in the mountainous region.

For example, the widening of Interstate 66, both inside and outside the Capital Beltway, is a $2.7 billion project that will not require any state transportation funds, only toll revenue collected by the private developer.

The widening of Interstate 64 on the Peninsula east of Richmond uses almost $400 million in state funds, but relies on almost $1.2 billion raised by regional taxes in Hampton Roads established in the 2013 funding package.

“The project didn’t go forward because of state funds,” Layne said. “It went forward because of regional funds.”

In contrast, the state has allocated $168 million to improve I-81, but has no other source of revenue, such as regional funds or tolls. Appropriations Vice Chairman R. Steven Landes, R-Augusta, said Monday he intends to poll his constituents to determine if they would support tolling on the highway.

“It’s something we need to ask our citizens up and down the entire (I-81) corridor,” Landes said.

In an interview earlier this month, Layne challenged the gubernatorial nominees and other candidates to tell the public how they would pay for the transportation projects they want done.

“If you want to focus on I-81, tell me which projects are you going to cancel,” he said. “If you’re not going to cancel projects, then tell me how you’re going to pay for it.”

Gillespie spokesman Dave Abrams said, “Ed will get more mileage, literally, out of our transportation dollars by supporting a lockbox on dedicated transportation funds to ensure they are spent on transportation projects and opposing project labor agreements that require union contracts on public private partnerships, which drive up the costs of projects which results in fewer of them.”

Turner, speaking for Northam, said, “He is proud to have worked with Governor McAuliffe on reforming how Virginia repairs and builds its roads.”

 Read the full story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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