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Culpeper drivers face a taxing problem
By Dan Roem
Staff Writer
Regional taxing plans for transportation improvements throughout Northern Virginia currently exclude Culpeper County drivers who use the roads — U.S. 29, Route 28, and U.S. 1 — but do not technically live in the Northern Virginia planning district.
Some lawmakers in that district think that should change.
“You know that traffic jam we’ve got at [the U.S. 29 and Interstate-66 corridor]; that’s not Prince William," said Charles Colgan, president pro tempore of the Senate and finance committee chairman. "That’s Winchester, Warrenton and Culpeper, Fauquier; that’s all those people coming in. [They should] be paying their fair share.”
Prince William County Delegate Jackson Miller (R-50th) concurred during interviews with the pair last week.
Fauquier residents should pay into the system, Jackson argued, and “I would like to...talk about putting Fauquier in the Northern Virginia planning district,” he said.
After the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that allowing the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) to raise taxes was unconstitutional, the legislature and governor could not agree again on how to fund transportation.
During this year's special session, the House Republican leadership would not support tax increases, and the Senate Democratic leadership rejected any raids on future General Fund money for transportation.
The bottom line for Culpeper commuters is, for another year, projects like the widenings of U.S. 29 in Gainesville and U.S. 28 south of Manassas will be pushed back, and the Virginia Railway Express will not likely be extended west of Manassas any time soon.
In interviews last week, Miller said he would consider tax hikes to fund transportation, unlike many of his Republican collegues.
But “I am opposed to a statewide tax increase where Northern Virginia just again sends money to the same funding formula,” Miller said.
Instead, he favors regional taxation plans for donor areas like Northern Virginia — apparently including Culpeper — and Hampton Roads.
That is “because 100 percent of that money would stay in Northern Virginia as opposed to a sales tax or anything else, where Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads raises the vast majority of the money. It goes back into the same old transportation funding formula, and we get a lot less back than what we’re putting into it.”
But none of this is likely to happen anytime soon.
According to Colgan, the legislature passing any legislation that will provide new funding for transportation packages is unlikely in 2009.
“I don’t think you’re going to see any change this coming year because there’s an election coming up,” said the senate’s most senior member. “And if they wouldn’t vote for it last year, with the election two years away, I don’t think the Republicans are going to vote for it this [upcoming] year; we have an election...in November for the House.”
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