Taxes, Roads and Scamming the Electorate

Off the top, we want to congratulate Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat Creigh Deeds for the overall tenor of their respective campaigns for governor.

Aside from the very real problem of Deeds trying to duck and dodge his opponent’s call for a series of 10 debates across the commonwealth, the two men have, thus far, conducted themselves with the dignity Virginia voters deserve. We sincerely hope that behavior continues as Election Day draws nearer.

That being said, only one gubernatorial hopeful is being straight with Virginians about the transportation crisis looming in the state’s future, and that’s Creigh Deeds.

Earlier this month, in an online chat hosted by Media General’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, Deeds said, flat out, that he would sign legislation raising the gas tax if the General Assembly sent a bill to his desk.

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The last time the tax was raised was back in 1986, when Gov. Gerald Baliles and the Assembly crafted a transportation package to address pressing state infrastructure needs. And there it has sat for 23 years.

In the intervening two decades, sensible, business-minded Democrats and Republicans in the legislature were replaced by ideological, movement Republicans who see government at any level as a cancer in the body politic to be excised at any and all costs. The public, buying into their hocus-pocus, has come to believe that everything it wants from government — and people want a lot — can be had simply by eliminating, are you ready, “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Want that busy, two-lane road widened to four? Cut some “waste.” That 50-year-old bridge in need of serious maintenance or even replacement. Prosecute some “fraud.” Want to add a trucks-only lane on Interstate 81? Just trim some “abuse.”

Please.

McDonnell knows in his gut that Virginia has critical, unmet transportation needs. The Virginia Beach Republican sees them every time he’s home in Tidewater or campaigning in Northern Virginia. The transportation position paper he’s put forward indicates he’s given the matter a lot of thought — selling off the state liquor stores, ending the state monopoly on liquor sales, special tax districts for Northern Virginia and Tidewater and dedicating revenues from possible offshore drilling to transportation.

He just can’t make the leap to the next level, to the acknowledgement that his party, with its approach, has let transportation in Virginia flounder. While his plan is detailed, it ultimately fails due to this major weakness.

It’s Deeds who realizes that transportation is immensely important for all Virginians. The senator from rural Bath County knows that strong, booming economies in Northern Virginia and Tidewater will benefit the rest of the state. Transportation is a statewide problem in need of a statewide solution; only Deeds, thus far, seems willing to acknowledge that fact.

The Democrat’s position paper on transportation is — how to put this nicely — rather scant on details. Only in the Times-Dispatch interview, when he stated he would sign a gas tax hike for transportation, does he give the public a window to his thinking.

But that peek reveals what’s been missing in the transportation debate, mostly on the part of Assembly Republicans: common sense, reason and fiscal responsibility.

Now if only the gentleman from Bath County would aggressively make his case for old-fashioned responsibility to a public duped into thinking it can always get something for nothing.