Partisan split emerges in Va. roads debate

RICHMOND (AP) -- House Republican leaders will choose Wednesday whether Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's transportation funding bill dies in a showdown floor vote or takes a lethal detour to a committee famously hostile to tax

increases.

Partisan divides

became clearer Tuesday, the second day of the special legislative session Kaine called to consider methods to finance the state's ballooning highway and transit needs.

Two Republican bills that would have reserved royalties from offshore oil and gas leases to transportation died before a Democratic-dominated Senate committee.

In the GOP-dominated House, Democrats were unable to sidetrack Republican legislation requiring that private firms audit the Kaine administration's transportation agencies or another bill that would make aggressive use of highway tolls and public-private highway ventures in Hampton Roads.

Kaine's bill would yield about $1 billion a year. Nearly half would go to fund highway upkeep and repair statewide. Kaine has said he won't accept any bill that doesn't provide significant maintenance money.

Leaders of the House GOP majority have ruled out a general statewide tax increase and prefer restoring regional authorities to levy taxes that underwrite new highway projects to ease traffic gridlock in the state's most populous areas, Hampton Roads and northern

Virginia.

The House Rules Committee will determine whether Kaine's transportation legislation goes directly to the House floor or to the Finance Committee. It appears certain to die in either place.

"If they kill everything in the House tomorrow, they're making a terrible mistake,'' said Colgan, from Prince William, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Besides the sharp and seemingly irreconcilable partisan differences, regional tensions emerged Tuesday over prospects that the state's formula for allocating transportation money could be altered, shifting more money to fast-growing urban and suburban areas.

Rural legislators fear that a proposed formula based on population could leave them with no cash to build new roads or fix old ones.

Saslaw, the Senate Democratic Leader from Fairfax, said no such measures would emerge from the Senate. But he can't assure Democratic and Republican senators from rural areas that similar efforts won't be attempted in the House.

Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol, questioned Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer during a briefing to the Senate Finance Committee over whether Kaine would sign a law that directs more road funding to urban areas.

"For those of us in some parts of the commonwealth that don't maybe have as high a growth rate as others but still have very expensive transportation projects, it concerns us greatly when we see bills that are introduced that reallocates the funding formula,'' Wampler said.

Homer said legislators will have to settle how new construction funds are allocated, but added that Kaine would not accept a change in funding that diminishes the state's ability to maintain roads and bridges in rural

regions.

Democratic Sen. Roscoe Reynolds said that while the most critical needs for mass transit improvements are in congested urban areas, rural regions dependent solely on highways are in their own crisis with gasoline no longer affordable for some people.

"I live in an area where there's no such thing as mass transportation. You either have a car or truck, a bicycle or you walk,'' said Reynolds, of Henry County.