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By DONALD DEL ROSSO
Arundel Newspapers Staff Writer Next week’s special General Assembly session could mean the end of the commonwealth’s age-old pay-as-you-go approach to funding its road construction needs.
For the first time, Virginia will consider a proposal that would allow it to finance statewide highway building projects with bonds.
On July 28, Gov. Baliles’ Commission on Transportation in the 21st Century recommended a package of tax increases and the use of revenue and “pledge” bonds to help fund $10.2 billion in road construction needs over the next decade.
But many have doubts about the entire package and question whether the revenue and pledge bonds truly represent a departure from the pay-as-you-go method, which Gov. Harry F. Byrd spearheaded in the 1920s.
Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers believe the use of pledge bonds would be consistent with pay-as-you go because they would be repaid with designated revenue sources, such as the gasoline tax.
Thus, according to the proposal, the size of a bond would be tied directly to the amount of revenue generated by the gas tax, which the commission has recommended be increased from 15 to 19 cents a gallon.
But Sen. Charles Waddell (D-Loudoun/Fairfax) views the bond proposals differently.
“It’s a break with pay-as-you-go to an extent but not as much as some would’ve liked.”
He said the proposals “will allow us to get up-front money and pay it back. You may be paying with taxes collected, but it’s done with bonds. It’s not paying with money in the bank,” as the state has with the strict pay-as-you-go formula.
The senator added: “That was pay-before-you-go, actually.”
The “legacy” of Virginia’s pay-as-you-go approach to road construction originated in 1923 when voters opposed a $50 million bond referendum, Barry Lawrence and John Schofield state in the March/April issue of Virginia Review.
“As a political philosophy,” the authors note in a six-page article,
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