The Virginian Pilot reported this morning that eight lawmakers from Hampton Roads – Dels. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk; Robert Tata, R-Virginia Beach; John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake; Terrie Suit, R-Virginia Beach; Sal Iaquinto, R-Virginia Beach; Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News; Glenn Oder, R-Newport News; and Brenda Pogge, R-James City – support 1-cent sales tax increase to pay for roads.
I don’t think the citizens of the region will be any more supportive of the sales tax increase now than they were in 2002, when a similar proposal was rejected. Of the letters to the editor that I’ve seen, none have mentioned this solution. The people seem to be in favor of an increase in the gas tax. At the minimum, I would hope that these lawmakers would tell us what the gas tax would have to be in order to raise the same $153.8 million. After all, the original plan included a 2% local gas, which the HRTA wanted to increase to 5%.
Seems to me that these lawmakers are not taking into consideration the wishes of the people. It would be nice if they did.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
to bad , just more TAX AND SPEND off the backs of hard working people, this is not my GOP seems like next year they need to be cleaned out of office. a new generation of leadership is needed!
Our transportion system is broken because we are giving the politicians too much control. Until we started building “freeways,” we built toll roads. The “freeways” allow us to pretend the roads don’t cost anything, but “freeways” are actually very costly. The “freeways” allow the politicians to build roads for developers and to subsidize urban sprawl. To force politicians to put our money where it is needed, we need to go back to making the people who use our transportation infrastructure pay for it. We need to charge tolls and user fees that pay for the full cost.
Yeah, and while we’re at it, we need to go back to paying protection money, instead of wasting it on police departments. You don’t contribute, you don’t get an answer at 911.
Hello MB
I doubt I could say anything that could please you, but I will address your complaint.
To keep the cost of police departments down to a reasonable level, we do not provide free police protection just because someone asks for it. Even riding in an ambulance is not necessarily free. Because they do not find the security provided by government adequate (Imagine that!), some people find it necessary to hire private security firms. Some people put security alarms on their houses, buy firearms, etc. Almost everybody buys a lock for something.
When you buy a home in a development, you pay for the road that leads to your house, you pay for your driveway, and you pay for your garage. These are all surprising adequate. If we want to say the same about “freeways,” then I think we ought to make them “payways.”
Charity is a separate issue.
Hello, Tom. On the first point, I suspect you’re right. On the second, I don’t think you’re making the point you think you are (tho’ I admit that I just might be missing it). I *think* your security analogy grants that a basic police presence is an acceptable function of government. And that the private security, alarm systems, and locks are gravy that we are free to pay for ourselves. There is a baseline of services available to all, and we are free to improve upon them as needs and paranoia require.
So, if we’re going to take that model, then yes, it makes sense that developments pay for their own driveways, subdivision roads, and some portion of the county roads extending to these places. But the freeways that lead to them, like the police departments that protect them, provide such a widely-spread common good that the costs of them ought be borne by everyone.
Commonly funded freeways don’t infringe upon your right to live on a diamond encrusted private road, or drive the freeway in whatever claptrap vehicle you choose. But the freeway itself provides a huge benefit to every single person living in the country, and as a result should be commonly paid for. Further, the administrative costs of parsing and passing along tolls on every stretch of freeway far outweigh the rather small cost assessing a portion of it to all of us.
(All that said, I do look forward to your future explanations of how we ought to privatize the armed forces.)
MB – Neither the security guards in a bank or the night watchman in a private office building is a luxury. I have also found from personal experience that the lock I put on my gym locker is a grim necessity.
Government exists to protect our rights; it does not exist so we can impose the costs of our desires on each other. Because privately operated police and military forces serve those who pay them, we have government paid police and military forces to protect the rights of all.
Although the overall system serves the “common good,” individual pieces of our transportation infrastructure are not built for the “common good.” Whereas you might think a freeway or a mass transit system built a particular way in a particular place is a wonderful idea, others will have absolutely no use for it. How do we decide what is needed? We can each reach into our own pockets and pay a toll or user fee.
Consider. We all benefit from the trucking industry. The trucking industry serves the “common good.” Do you want to nationalized the trucking industry?