It’s Time to Hold Politicians Accountable
This is an advance copy of a column that will run in the Newport News Daily Press on Sunday.
It’s Time to Hold Politicians Accountable
Patrick McSweeney
April 2, 2006
To one who closely followed the 1986 debate over the transportation tax proposal of former Governor Gerald Baliles, the recent statements by Governor Timothy Kaine and others who propose raising taxes by $1 billion a year for transportation are eerily familiar. We heard the same false promises twenty years ago.
This time around, politicians should be held strictly accountable for what they say to win support for a tax hike. If new taxes are enacted, those politicians who promised Virginians that the new tax revenues would relieve congestion and assure a reliable, long-term source of funding for all transportation programs had better hope for a different outcome than occurred after the 1986 tax hike. There has been no serious effort by the news media to press tax proponents to support their claims or to explain why a different result should be expected this time.
A 1989 Senate Finance Committee report confirmed that the 1986 tax hike hardly made a dent in the transportation funding needs of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Although the report claimed that the new taxes had produced significant benefits, it acknowledged that this new funding source would not be a reliable, long-term solution. A January 1990 report to Governor L. Douglas Wilder found that anticipated transportation needs in 2010 would grow to $36.8 billion. Baliles had been forced to concede a year earlier that his transportation initiatives were running out of gas.
The media also refuses to explore whether the same growth impacts induced by the 1986 tax hike would be felt again. Kaine campaigned in 2005 on a promise to give local governments enhanced authority to control that very type of growth. Under pressure from developers and to the chagrin of slow-growth advocates who supported him in 2005, he abandoned that pledge.
Kaine now contends that, even though he abandoned this key proposal, he won approval of several other land use bills this year. But he fails to note — and the media ignores — that the land use legislation that was enacted already had the support of developers. Kaine finally acknowledged that the principal reason for backing off his growth-control pledge was to secure the support of developers for a transportation tax increase this year.
Baliles took the correct procedural approach in 1986 by calling a special session to consider his transportation tax proposal. He did not insert it in the state budget that year, as Warner and Kaine did in 2004 and 2006. Instead, Baliles asked for an up-or-down vote on his tax proposal. It was enacted on its own, not because he used an extortion tactic: holding the state budget hostage to win approval of the tax hike.
Last week, the media also gave a pass to U.S. Senator John Warner, who once again inserted himself into the deliberations of the General Assembly on a tax issue as he did in 1986 and 2004. This time, Warner warned state legislators that Virginia could lose matching federal transportation funding if the budget impasse isn’t soon broken and urged legislators to support a tax hike, as if that were the appropriate and constitutional way to break the impasse.
Not one editorial writer remarked on the irony of a member of the U.S. Senate lecturing a state legislature about how to handle transportation legislation when Congress enacted such a disgraceful, pork-laden highway bill last year.
When will the media begin to do their job?
It’s Time to Hold Politicians Accountable
Patrick McSweeney
April 2, 2006
To one who closely followed the 1986 debate over the transportation tax proposal of former Governor Gerald Baliles, the recent statements by Governor Timothy Kaine and others who propose raising taxes by $1 billion a year for transportation are eerily familiar. We heard the same false promises twenty years ago.
This time around, politicians should be held strictly accountable for what they say to win support for a tax hike. If new taxes are enacted, those politicians who promised Virginians that the new tax revenues would relieve congestion and assure a reliable, long-term source of funding for all transportation programs had better hope for a different outcome than occurred after the 1986 tax hike. There has been no serious effort by the news media to press tax proponents to support their claims or to explain why a different result should be expected this time.
A 1989 Senate Finance Committee report confirmed that the 1986 tax hike hardly made a dent in the transportation funding needs of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Although the report claimed that the new taxes had produced significant benefits, it acknowledged that this new funding source would not be a reliable, long-term solution. A January 1990 report to Governor L. Douglas Wilder found that anticipated transportation needs in 2010 would grow to $36.8 billion. Baliles had been forced to concede a year earlier that his transportation initiatives were running out of gas.
The media also refuses to explore whether the same growth impacts induced by the 1986 tax hike would be felt again. Kaine campaigned in 2005 on a promise to give local governments enhanced authority to control that very type of growth. Under pressure from developers and to the chagrin of slow-growth advocates who supported him in 2005, he abandoned that pledge.
Kaine now contends that, even though he abandoned this key proposal, he won approval of several other land use bills this year. But he fails to note — and the media ignores — that the land use legislation that was enacted already had the support of developers. Kaine finally acknowledged that the principal reason for backing off his growth-control pledge was to secure the support of developers for a transportation tax increase this year.
Baliles took the correct procedural approach in 1986 by calling a special session to consider his transportation tax proposal. He did not insert it in the state budget that year, as Warner and Kaine did in 2004 and 2006. Instead, Baliles asked for an up-or-down vote on his tax proposal. It was enacted on its own, not because he used an extortion tactic: holding the state budget hostage to win approval of the tax hike.
Last week, the media also gave a pass to U.S. Senator John Warner, who once again inserted himself into the deliberations of the General Assembly on a tax issue as he did in 1986 and 2004. This time, Warner warned state legislators that Virginia could lose matching federal transportation funding if the budget impasse isn’t soon broken and urged legislators to support a tax hike, as if that were the appropriate and constitutional way to break the impasse.
Not one editorial writer remarked on the irony of a member of the U.S. Senate lecturing a state legislature about how to handle transportation legislation when Congress enacted such a disgraceful, pork-laden highway bill last year.
When will the media begin to do their job?
posted by f mcdonald at 9:50 AM
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