Kaine optimistic about road agreement

General Assembly Republicans can be either “problem solvers” or “problem avoiders” on transportation issues during the legislature’s special session next week, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Monday in Lynchburg.

The session’s success depends on how many decide to become problem solvers, he said.

Kaine predicted the odds were 50-50 on whether the legislators will approve revenue measures that, he says, are needed to halt a trend for road maintenance to gobble up all the state’s construction funds.

Del. Morgan Griffith of Salem, the House majority leader, said the governor was already trying to blame Republicans for transportation

problems while lacking support in his own party for the taxes and fees Kaine has proposed.

Although his stop in Lynchburg focused heavily on his transportation package, the governor touched on two other highlights during an interview with The News & Advance. They were: vice presidential candidates and Lynchburg’s chances for getting a second daily passenger train to Washington, D.C.

Kaine once again declined to say whether he would refuse an offer to be the running mate with presumptive nominee Barack Obama on the national Democratic ticket. As Kaine has said before, he doesn’t expect Obama to choose him.

Perhaps more interestingly, Kaine revealed he’s made tentative plans in case Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., were to be selected as vice president.

Webb is mentioned frequently by pundits and on blogs, but Obama’s deliberation about whom to choose for the No. 2 slot has remained secretive.

If Webb were to be tapped and become a winner, Kaine would have to appoint a Democrat to serve for one year in Webb’s Senate seat and then stand for election in November 2009, the governor said. And, although he doesn’t know whom he would appoint, Kaine is taking himself out of the Senate picture, he said.

Discussing passenger train service in Lynchburg, Kaine said an Amtrak proposal to add a second daily train between the city and Washington, D.C., depends on two keys: federal support of Amtrak, and Virginia legislators’ approval of passenger rail funds.

Future federal funding for Amtrak depends heavily on the next president’s depth of enthusiasm for the national rail system, the governor said.

But if Kaine’s plans for new revenue to fund passenger rail are rejected by the legislature, Virginia can’t afford the nearly $2 million per year Amtrak says it would need for operating a second train on the Lynchburg-Washington route, the governor said.

His overall revenue package for transportation will have several legislators as co-sponsors when it is formally submitted later this week, Kaine said. He’s still working on lining up more support, he said, but he admitted his original package faces a dim prospect in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates.

Griffith zeroed in on the number of co-sponsors.

“What you haven’t seen yet is a majority in either the House or Senate that will stand behind him saying, ‘we support this,’” Griffith said.

“I’m looking to see 40 House members” out of 45 Democrats in the body, Griffith said.

“Before he calls us into special session he should be able to say he has 40 co-patrons in the House and 15 in the Senate,” Griffith said. He acknowledged that Kaine’s co-sponsors probably will be announced this week.

Kaine conceded that his transportation revenue package may be sent straight to the House Finance Committee, which is stacked with anti-tax legislators who can kill the bill without a recorded vote. “That would be the opening move on the chess board,” he said.

“But, will they have the votes to pass anything? There are some high stakes for these guys in this session, when they just voted for a transportation package last year that has largely been struck down” by the state Supreme Court and repealed by the assembly, Kaine said.

If Republicans kill the governor’s transportation proposal, “will they pass something else?” he asked. “Some people have floated ideas, but we haven’t seen a plan.”

Kaine said he hopes the special session will accept some concept legislation and refer it to a conference committee, then adjourn for several weeks while that small group of legislators shapes the concepts into bills that the full assembly can return to Richmond and vote on.

“My attitude is, come next week, we are going to divide the world into the problem solvers and the problem avoiders. I can’t guarantee that the problem solvers will outnumber the problem avoiders, but I know what the desire of individual members are, and I can guarantee that if it were a secret ballot the problem solvers would vastly outnumber the problem avoiders,” Kaine said.