POLITICS Virginia

POLITICS

Virginia’s “Axe the Car Tax” Guvn’r

The 1997 gubernatorial contest in Virginia began with pundits praising Democrat Don Beyer as the commonwealth's version of Bill Clinton - smart and smooth, if a little smarmy, but a far more accomplished and natural a politician than his opponent.

The Republican, Jim Gilmore was a stodgy undistinguished guy, and for a while he seemed to be doing well to keep it a close race. Beyer while presentable was a boringly predictable moderate-liberal. For most of the campaign the opinion polling showed the race as even.

“Too close to call,” the papers kept saying.

Then all of a sudden with less than 2 weeks to go to polling day Gilmore found his issue — Virginia’s property tax on cars. He’d abolish it, he said. It was an unjust imposition on Virginians. They shouldn’t have to pay a special state tax to own a car. It was wrong. His campaign slogan became “End the car tax.” Wherever he spoke huge signs proclaimed “NO CAR TAX” and “AXE THE CAR TAX”

Irony of ironies, Beyer the Democrat is a car salesman — owns a very successful chain of car dealerships in the northern Va suburbs. But he didn’t understand the political hazards of being seen to meddle with the car. He equivocated. Yes, he’d like to abolish the car tax, Beyer said, but his Republican opponent’s promise was reckless. It would deprive schools and other vital services of money.

He was done for.

The next surveys showed that Gilmore’s embrace of the anti-car tax issue had transformed the race, catapulted him into a winning position,10 or 12 points ahead.

Beyer responded by proposing a modified “responsible” car tax cut, but it did him no good. A large slab of swing voters hated that car tax with a passion and they wanted the guy whose heart was most in getting rid of it. Gilmore won in a landslide Nov 4.

No wonder politicians are reluctant to raise gasoline taxes. People are angry. They don’t believe government gives them value for the tax money they pay.

There seem to be both risks and opportunities in this situation for tollsters — obviously risks of doing anything that can be interpreted as an imposition on car owners and might set off the outpouring of voter anger that you saw in Virginia, buy also the opportunity to say something along these lines:

“There’s a better way than taxes to fund the highways we need to get around. Our way offers you choices. Rather than have your money taken from you each time you pump gas or renew your license, you’ll pay directly for what you get. We’ll offer you different levels of service at different prices, prices that vary to reflect relative scarcity and cost. You choose what you buy. One choice will be a quick relaxed cruise through in an uncongested lane. But that is very expensive to provide and you’ll have to pay. There will be other choices. If and when you judge that the toll for premium travel is not worth the price, you’ll take the lesser lanes at the lower toll or the same lanes at a less congested cheaper time...We are not magicians conjuring up resources out of nowhere, or a charity able to enlist volunteer labor. This is a business that has pay going wages for staff and must attract willing capital to build and to rebuild and operate this expensive facility we call a highway. Its livelihood depends on using the revenues to provide a service that people want at prices they are prepared to pay, and to earn a return for investors who risked their money, or the management deserves to go, and to be replaced by others who can manage better. We tollsters depend on our customers. They vote with their pocketbooks every time they decide to ride our facility, or not to ride it. Our future must not depend on the whims and chaos of 4-yearly political campaigns or the underhand machinations of special interests buying favors at the public’s expense. That is why roads need to be toll-financed, not tax-financed, and why the state turnpikes have to be turned from being part-businesses/part-state agencies into simple, straight businesses, clean of politics, privatized...”

A bunch of toll projects: Virginia has a bunch of toll projects that have been moving close to state approval:

• I-895 Connector, Richmond VA: heading off I-95 from near the Philip Morris factory on I-95 eastward over the James River to provide a new link from the southside to the airport and to surrounding burgeoning commercial areas east of the river and with the major eastside I-295

• twinning of Norfolk’s Midtown Tunnel, construction of an associated Pinners Point interchange providing improved connections to the ports and downtown

• the Chesapeake Bypass VA-168, to allow Washingtonians to get to their seaside resort areas of the Outer Banks of South Carolina on a motorway instead of cluttering local streets with stop&go traffic

• HOT lanes on I-64 from the Norfolk naval base to the Virginia Beach Expressway

Third Hampton Roads Crossing: Recently the local metro planning organization unanimously selected Alternative 9 of a list of 11 alternates subject to study and public comment. The now official locally preferred configuration is the addition of 3 x2-lane bridges/tubes to the existing 2x3-lane bridge/tubes of the Monitor-Merrimack Bridge-Tunnel. The 2/2/2/2/2 configuration could be built in stages with the middle 2-lanes “multi-modal” to be HOV, HOT, bus or rail. There would be a progressive upgrade of the north-south I-664 on either side of the crossing, from I-64 on the north end to the I-264/US-460/I-64 interchange in the south, making this the main spinal north-south motorway for the Hampton Roads metro area.

The chosen alternative sprouts a completely new east-west spur mid-bay to link into a new port area (Craney Island. Cost of the project is put at c$2.4b and Dwight Farmer the trnasp chief at the local MPO says he can see no way it can be fiannced without tolls, though fianncing has not been formally considered. (Contact Dwight Farmer 757 420 8300)