The New York Times-20080125-Virginia Nears an About-Face on Costly Driver Penalties
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Virginia Nears an About-Face on Costly Driver Penalties
Responding to complaints from thousands of state residents, a Virginia Senate committee approved a measure Wednesday repealing costly fees that were being levied against residents caught driving 20 miles above the speed limit or engaging in other reckless driving.
The fees, which took effect July 1, ranged from $750 to $3,000 and were supposed to help raise money for road projects, avoid a tax increase, and improve road safety. Instead, they led to an online petition with more than 177,000 signers and at least 15 bills filed in the state legislature calling for their repeal.
They also led the governor, Tim Kaine, a Democrat, to reverse his initial support for the fees after a study by the General Assembly's investigative branch found that they would not produce the revenues initially predicted.
With highway deaths last year in the state topping 1,000 for the first time since 1990, the fees had obviously failed to make the state's roads safer, Governor Kaine said on Jan. 9 in his third State of the Commonwealth address. Many police officers and judges also complained about the measure because of the paperwork the fees created and the time required to process them.
Delegate David B. Albo, a Republican from Fairfax County, who sponsored the initial proposal for the fees, said that rather than eliminating them, lawmakers should have retooled them to reduce the number of offenses they covered. Nonetheless, Mr. Albo voted in favor of a House of Delegates bill on Tuesday repealing the fees. The Senate is likely to vote on the measure on Monday.
Unfortunately, Mr. Albo said, the issue got Internet and blogger stink all over it, which meant there was so much misinformation surrounding the issue that it couldn't be salvaged.
Bryan Ault takes credit for much of that stink.
For me, the lesson here is that government is accountable only if people hold it accountable, said Mr. Ault, the 28-year-old Alexandria resident who started the online petition.
He said that in the months since starting the petition in early July, he received a surprising number of e-mail comments from signers, many of them Republicans, supporting a 1-cent increase in the gasoline tax as an alternative to the fees.
Out-of-state drivers were exempted from the fees because Mr. Kaine said it would be difficult to force nonresidents to pay, for practical and legal reasons. Many of the petitioners said they resented that the fees were discriminatory, Mr. Ault said.
Still unclear, however, is how state lawmakers will get the $65 million that the fees were supposed to raise annually.
We're going to be short some money, that's for sure, said the Senate Finance Committee chairman, Charles J. Colgan, a Democrat from Prince William County.
Mr. Colgan said that in terms of alternate methods of financing for road construction, two Senate bills had been proposed seeking to raise the gasoline tax by 2 cents, which would produce $100 million, and a third bill to increase taxes on off-track betting, which would also probably cover the $65 million deficit.
Problem with all three bills, he said, is they don't have a chance to pass.
