RICHMOND, VA (AP) Jerry Kilgore wants drivers who race down the freeway, lurching without warning from lane to lane and aggressively cutting off other motorists, to pay more than $100 million a year for the state’s highway needs.
The Republican candidate for governor intends to revive legislation similar to a bill that failed in this year’s General Assembly. He added the initiative to the framework of a transportation initiative he sketched broadly when he kicked off his campaign in March.
Kilgore said drivers might pay a $100 punitive premium on top of existing regular fines for driving 15 to 19 mph over the posted speed limit under his bill. Driving on a suspended license could cost a $250 special levy, and driving under the influence of alcohol would add $500 to what is already one of the nation’s most severe drunken driving laws, he said.
All of the money would be directed into the Transportation Trust Fund, an account supposedly dedicated solely for roads, rails and other travel infrastructure, he said.
“It could bring in more than $100 million by requiring abusers to pay,” Kilgore said.
The fines exceed some of those in legislation Republican Dels. David Albo and Thomas D. Rust, both of Fairfax County, proposed this year. That bill died in February before the Senate Finance Committee, where senators derided it as unfair and an unsound way to fund tens of billions of dollars worth of unmet transportation needs.
Kilgore has already proposed regional transportation authorities that would have authority independent of the General Assembly and the Commonwealth Transportation Board to borrow money and even levy taxes, provided voters in the five or six regions approve it in referendums.
He also is calling for more public-private transportation initiatives that would “build new roads faster and more economically,” but would necessitate tolls or other forms of user-financing.
Kilgore and his likely Democratic rival in November, Tim Kaine, supports a constitutional amendment to create a “lock box” to shield the Transportation Trust Fund from legislative raids. Lawmakers took money from the fund in 2002 and 2003 to help bail the state out of $6 billion in projected budget shortfalls.
Kilgore, however, advocates using money from the general fund, which pays for such basics as public education, law-enforcement and health care for the aged and needy, to augment transportation. Kaine supports a “two-way lock box” that bars commandeering transportation money for general government operations but also puts the general fund off-limits to transportation.
“My commitment is to spend general fund dollars on transportation in the future. We’re seeing huge economic growth in the general fund right now,” Kilgore said.
The state’s monthly revenue collections, fed by a strong economic expansion, are well ahead of their budgeted expectations, creating the prospect that the state will end its fiscal year June 30 with a general fund surplus topping $1.2 billion.
“Instead of creating another program, let’s build another bridge or another road,” Kilgore said.
The weakness of reliance on general funds for road-building is its susceptibility to economic downturns, possibly disrupting money supplies necessary to sustain long-term highway construction plans set six years in advance.
From 2001 to 2004, the Commonwealth Transportation Board slashed its six-year road-building plan by approximately $4 billion, or 38 percent, to accommodate funding shortfalls caused by the recession and by years of substantially underestimated project costs.
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