Game Change!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Chap

In the House Finance committee yesterday, my friend the Secretary of Transportation described the Governor’s transportation plan to raise the sales tax on Virginia residents,  eliminate the gas tax paid by out-of-state drivers, and charge a $100 penalty on hybrid vehicles, as “game-changing.”

Here are some other game-changing ideas:

1.  Move the state capital to Big Stone Gap.

2.  Give pets the right to vote.

3.  Make Serbo-Croatian the official state language.

4.  Sell marijuana at our state rest stops.

5.  Allow riverboat gambling on the Occoquan.

6.  Make “Highway to Hell” the official state song.

7.  Turn UVA into a school of mortuary science  (“Go Cadav-aliers!”)

8.  Sell naming rights to our public highways.

9.  Create a minority legislative district which cuts through peoples’ bedrooms.

10.  Change our name to “South Maryland.”

 

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://twitter.com/TheTysonsCorner TheTysonsCorner

    Love it Chap.

    Sean Connaughton and his American Petroleum Institute past is showing up in the form of huge subsidies to oil companies, putting oil rigs in the chesapeake, and providing massive pet projects to the coal industry via the Coalfields Expressway. This bill is all about giving praise to the Governor as the GOP member who got rid of the gas tax, and NOTHING to do with gas price reduction which is set by regional influence OR funding transportation (which this proposal doesn’t increase 1 cent until 2018 and even then its via major assumptions).

    We need to spread the information so that people understand this isnt a sustainable or equitable plan to charge people who drive less to pay MORE for roads than people who drive hummers 100 miles per day.

    http://thetysonscorner.com/bob-mcdonnell-finds-new-and-innovative-way-to-hurt-nova/

  • Lola Quintela

    Exactly. And that is why I am so upset that Mark Keam voted for it. I don’t understand it. Would love to be a fly on the wall at the next PDDC meeting…

  • DJRippert

    You were first elected to the state legislature in 2001. That’s 12 years ago. The state gas tax has been frozen, in cents per mile, since 1987. That’s 25 years. In other words, for half the time that the General Assembly has chosen to ignore inflation you have been in and out of the General Assembly.

    You have tried to pass the sensible approach of indexing the gas tax. You have failed to get that legislation adopted. That’s an A for effort but an F for results.

    Now, McDonnell has proposed a plan that will automatically index transportation taxes to inflation. While the plan has problems it solves the biggest problem – the inability of the General Assembly as a body to understand the complex economic concept of inflation.

    You have no basis opposing McDonnell’s proposal unless you have a better plan that can get passed in this General Assembly session. Your constituents and all the people of Northern Virginia are sick to death of the only answer to transportation funding being the imposition of exorbitant tolls on our roads.

    Finally, let me remind you of the last serious attempt at transportation reform – HB3202. In that Three Stooges episode the lawyer – laden General Assembly and our attorney – governor (Tim Kaine) passed a transportation funding bill that was immediately and unanimously found to be unconstitutional by the Virginia Supreme Court.

    You and the other members of the General Assembly are on the verge of another game changing idea: “Term limits for all”.

  • Young_million

    This is another example where NOVA gives Richmond $1.00 and we get .25 back. Not a good deal for Fairfax. Plus $100 for hybrid cars, the most of people who own hybrid cars live in NOVA. Just another tax focus on us and not on Rest of VA.