Shannon: McDonnell's bad idea will take its toll

Gov. Bob McDonnell's successful effort to reopen rest stops on Interstate 95 was a good idea. His current effort to open tollbooths on I-95 is not.

McDonnell obviously faces a dilemma: Virginia desper­ately needs road improve­ments and faces a backlog of maintenance expenses. Yet the General Assembly refuses to increase funding.

McDonnell's situation reminds me of a high school booster club president trying to buy desperately needed new uniforms. Bake sales are over-regulated. Car washes face competition from pee-wee teams. The parents refuse to pony up additional contributions, so the wet T­shirt contest is looking better and better.

The governor justifies his wet T-shirt contest charging a toll on a road that's already paid for by calling it a "user fee." But this toll is simply a tax on your destination.

Goods shipped north to Prince William County via I-95 will be subject to a desti­nation tax goods shipped to Petersburg via I-85 will avoid. The same goes for travelers to those destinations. McDonnell has received permission to put one toll­booth on the North Carolina border and the second south of Fredericksburg. Drivers will soon discover that both will function as construction zones that never go away.

Even with EZ Pass, there will be new slowdowns, adding the lost time insult to the increased expense injury.

Strangely enough, the American Trucking Associa­tion supports an alternative that is not only more practi­cal and has the bonus of being supported by business. According to the ATA, add­ing a few pennies to the gas tax is a more equitable and efficient way of raising road money "because it doesn't require governments to hire workers to man tollbooths or spend millions of dollars to build and maintain toll plazas."

Virginia's 17.5 cent per gallon gas tax has not been raised since the mid-1980s and prospects for an increase in this century are dim, even though a gas tax is a reason­able pay-as-you-go user fee on highways.

Unfortunately, drivers are deadlocked between Republicans who won't raise taxes a penny and Democrats who won't cut spending by a penny. GOP conservatives contend the state has plenty of money and it's time to re­pay the money that has been "borrowed" over the years from the highway trust fund.

Another Republican objec­tion is that under Obama's leadership from behind, gas prices have approached re­cord levels and Virginia driv­ers can't afford the additional expense. This is untrue (the drivers' part, not the Obama part). North Carolina's gas tax is almost double Virginia's, but per-gallon prices on a recent trip to Charlotte were about the same or occasion­ally lower than in PWC.

A better transportation funding solution is for the GOP to lead from the front, increase the gas tax and make it a percentage instead of a fixed amount. If we can't persuade voters paying for highways is a core function of government, we won't ever be able to persuade them to cut the role of government in non-core functions.

If this candor is too brac­ing for my fellow conserva­tives, then try the semantics approach. Republicans sup­port cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients and government employee, so how about a cost-of-living increase for the gas tax?

Or the GOP could take Norman Leahy's advice and increase a gas fee that already exists. In addition to the 17.5­cent gas tax, Virginia charges 2.2 cents per gallon in fees.

This is very low. West Virginia charges 11.7 cents in fees, in addition to 20.5 cents in gas tax. Raising the gas "fee" doesn't make a politician any more vulnerable to the "tax raiser" charge than increas­ing the charge to renew your driver's license does.

Contact Michael Shannon, a public relations and advertising consultant with corporate, government and political experience around the globe, at michael-shannon@comcast.net.