McDonnell announces legislative proposals for transportation

In an effort to shore up Virginia's stagnant highway financing, Gov. Bob McDonnell has called for creating a state authority to build and run toll roads, and selling naming rights for Virginia's highways, bridges and interchanges.

In his 2012 legislative proposals for transportation, the governor also is calling for increasing the share of the state's sales tax going to transportation.

That gradually increasing proportion of the sales tax, which previously has been spent on general fund expenditures such as for schools and police, initially would put about $50 million a year into transportation, increasing to about $250 million by 2020.

The General Assembly would have to approve the change — putting 0.5 percentage point of the state's 5 percent sales tax toward transportation needs initially, and 0.75 percentage point of the tax by 2020.

On the naming-rights proposal, the Commonwealth Transportation Board would establish rules, fees and revenue projections, the governor's office said.

Last year, the McDonnell administration came up with a plan to increase spending on the state's overburdened transportation systems by nearly $4 billion in mostly borrowed money over the next three years. For the fiscal year that ends June 30, Virginia will spend about $5.3 billion on its highways, mass transit systems, ports and airports, an increase of $1.5 billion from the previous fiscal year's budget.

"We must take the necessary steps to build off of last year's historic efforts, provide additional new funding for maintenance and construction, and continue reforming our transportation agencies to deliver projects and services more efficiently," McDonnell said in a statement Friday.

"Virginia simply cannot remain a leader in economic development and job creation if we do not continue to address our transportation challenges," the governor said.

McDonnell's proposals are "a small step in the right direction," said Jeffrey C. Southard, executive vice president of the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance industry group. "But what the General Assembly needs to realize is that the patient is still bleeding to death."

Virginia's motor fuels tax — its leading source of state transportation revenue — has been 17.5 cents per gallon since 1986. Because of improved vehicle gas mileage, gas tax revenue has been flat, while the tax itself has lost half its value to inflation.

"In less than five years, our highway construction program will be gone," Southard said. "Debt service and ongoing maintenance needs will consume all of the revenues."

McDonnell's transfer of sales tax revenue from the general fund to transportation uses would provide immediate benefits, said Bob Chase, president of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance. "Everything else is 'sometime, maybe, occasionally.' You can't base a transportation program on intermittent infusions."

Environmental and development-control groups were critical of the governor's transportation plan.

"We're very concerned about robbing … the general fund when the governor says he has $4 billion to spend over the next three years," said Stewart Schwartz, executive director for the Coalition for Smart Growth.

McDonnell's plan "would shortchange other needs such as education, health, public safety and clean water," said Trip Pollard with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The Sierra Club called the governor's proposal to create a Route 460 Corridor Interstate Connector Economic Development Zone "yet another attempt to justify the unneeded and environmentally destructive Route 460 toll road between Petersburg and Hampton Roads, a road nobody except the governor seems to support."

Virginia has 5.4 million licensed drivers and nearly 7.6 million registered vehicles on its roads.