Road To Better Highways

It’s been almost three years since the Transportation Referendum. In 2002, the HRPDC/MPO proposed building five projects financed with regional taxes and needing approval by referendum.

The referendum was crushed at the polls, and regional leaders have spent nearly three years listening, exploring new and different ideas, and incorporating changes to their newest proposal.

The changes? This time, they’ll skip the referendum.

The five projects are all there. A regional sales tax increase is still there, but with regional car taxes (take that, Jim Gilmore) and regional gas tax increases and tolls, too.

Only this time, you won’t have a say.

No referendum, and no representation either. Since General Assembly members from Hampton Roads are outnumbered in both the House and Senate, every one of our Senators and Delegates can vote against raising our taxes, and conceivably it wouldn’t matter. Members outside of Hampton Roads can raise our taxes, while telling their own constituents they didn’t raise their taxes.

Talk about “taxation without representation.” This is a core problem with regionalism, and a major flaw in all the plans supported by the Pilot‘s recent editorial and guest editorialist - retired engineer Louis Guy. Regionalism should be about making government smaller and taxes lower. It should not be a tool to add a layer of more taxes and government between the levels we already have.

Calls for accountability ring hollow when we see only minor changes to the same plan voted down in 2002, as if they think all voters need is time to eventually agree with those on the losing side of that vote. For instance, why should only local folks pay for the so-called third crossing which helps the ports more than it helps the people. Expanding the HRBT moves twice the traffic for half the cost, a point made repeatedly in 2002, but the 5 billion dollar third crossing is still the centerpiece of this old plan.

Mr. Guy’s statement “we can’t let past failures, like the referendum, stand in our way” is the attitude that irks citizens most of all. The supermajority who voted no in 2002 didn’t see it as a failure and the attitude to implement the plan that was voted down no matter what the people said reinforces the lack of trust that led to its defeat.

This “my way for more highways” attitude is also a core problem with the HRPDC/MPO, whose appointed status provides a certain political insulation. Members of the public can’t offer their views at their meetings, and since it’s an appointed body, it can meet in private outside the view of the people and the press. Such insulation has encouraged a disconnect with public appetites so profound, that rather than respond to the answers, they’ve decided to omit the questions. The answer, however, is not to have regional elections, as the Pilot and Mr. Guy suggest. If the state rejects the plan, and the voters reject the plan, the answer should be to change the plan, not create another government that might approve it.

Rehashing the same regional tax scheme that was defeated so soundly is just another step along that anti-citizen continuum, and a slap in the face to those who argued rightly that state highways should be funded through the state. The message seems to be “You don’t approve? Next time we won’t ask”. The transportation problems we have pale in comparison to the problems of appointed regional leadership who see the major problem with their failed proposals was that they asked the voters first.

It’s time to rethink these regional entities, and who serve on them, when they promote plans and ideas so out of step with the mainstream that we make no progress in solving transportation issues year after year.

It’s disappointing that three years of work has resulted in so little change in the choice of projects, so much allegiance to a failed regional tax agenda, and so little respect to the major objections from 2002. But since their plans can now be approved without a single vote of any Hampton Roads Delegate, Senator or citizen, the actions of the HRPDC/MPO have gone from disappointing to dangerous.

Brian Kirwin is a political consultant with Rourk Public Relations in Virginia Beach, Va. He is one of the state's leading political experts with numerous campaign victories to his credit. Brian can be reached at (757) 962-2296 or brian@rourkpr.com.