County leaders, legislators disagree on funding for roads

Gridlock on Chesterfield's busiest roads could become the norm due to a lack of funding for road improvements. Chesterfield supervisors and state legislators met last week to discuss funding options to alleviate the county's congested roadways. A friendly dinner attended by the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors and local legislators last Wednesday masked growing differences between the two groups over taxes and state funding to Chesterfield.

County leaders are increasingly vocal about what they perceive as a lack of state funding and are gearing up again to ensure legislation that's unfriendly toward county priorities won't pass the General Assembly session early next year.

Though four of the five supervisors and most of Chesterfield's state legislators are Republicans, there are significant differences on funding issues. Both the State Senate and the House of Delegates are under the control of Republicans.

At its board meeting last week, the supervisors adopted county legislative priorities, placing transportation funding at the top. "By 2011, state funding for new roads will whittle away to nothing," said Board Chairman Dickie King. Other county leaders have been equally vocal about what they see as "the state walking away from its responsibilities."

Some state funding was used to widen Route 360 between Route 288 and Winterpock Road. Delegate Sam Nixon, a member of the House Republican caucus, "scoffed at the notion that we walked away." Even the "most generous" tax proposal would have provided little new money for the Richmond District's transportation needs, despite a 20 percent increase in state spending, he argued. Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads would be the primary beneficiaries.

"The final [state] budget ended up spending less money on transportation than [former] Governor Warner's [initial] budget," Nixon said. "There are members of the General Assembly, who are so determined to solve the problem in a particular way that they are willing to starve transportation simply to make a political point."

While there was some discussion of increasing the gas tax at Wednesday's dinner, no one endorsed that approach. Delegate Kirk Cox said Chesterfield was seeing increasing state funding.

"The [Chesterfield] board should tell us if it is endorsing raising the gas tax, sales tax or recordation fee," State Senator Steve Martin (R-Chesterfield) told this newspaper. "Tell us which tax should be raised or which services should be cut. If the county wants additional taxing authority, which ones? Chesterfield wants more money, but it's not intellectually honest to tell us not to raise taxes."

"Raising taxes would be my last resort," responded Kelly Miller, the Chesterfield board's vice chairman. "No decisions were made at the dinner, but concerns were expressed. The county shouldn't have to be put in the position of assuming a larger role."

Much of the county's $1.1 billion budget comes from property taxes, which won't be released until early next year. "I've been told assessments are going to be high again," said Miller. Last spring, the board indicated it would reduce the property tax rate by two cents per $100 of assessed value for next year's budget.

"We have a number of unmet needs-police, fire and EMS," he added. "[For transportation,] we don't have gridlock now...but I don't want to wait until we do."

Building new roads is a lower priority for the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) than maintaining the existing roads. Because of its growth rate, Chesterfield consistently transfers more roads than any other locality to VDOT for maintenance each year-particularly residential neighborhood roads. But John McCracken, Chesterfield's transportation chief and a former VDOT employee, has said county roads are being repaved less frequently.

The county's road wish list showed 17 improvements costing $509 million, far more state funding than anyone in the county's transportation department expects to receive. The number one request is to add two extra lanes on Route 10 from Route 1 east to Meadowville Road, costing $46 million.

Some legislators think the county is in a position to do more. County spending for this year's budget was increased 15.7 percent. At least one supervisor has proposed that the county budget should grow annually by the rate of inflation plus population growth.

Chesterfield legislators wanted to know how much of a budget surplus the county is running for FY07, but that is currently unknown. The FY06 budget surplus (ending June 30, 2006) won't be determined until next month. The FY05 surplus was $15.4 million.

The county's legislative priorities approved last week are designed to defend Chesterfield from the state government. In addition to more road money, the board priorities include protecting the cash proffer system, retaining control over land use and zoning, preventing cost-shifting to local governments with new state mandates and maintaining local revenue sources.

Loss of county prerogatives comes from new legislation or state budget changes, according to Mary Ann Curtin, director of intergovernmental relations. She expects legislation to be submitted next January in the General Assembly that could put caps on real estate taxes and shift some funding for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay to local governments. Midlothian Supervisor Terri Beirne wants to make sure Curtin is coordinating with other local governments to unite with their common concerns.

Despite an earlier special session on transportation, "The General Assembly still has not decided what to do about transportation funding," Curtin reported to the board.