HoodaThunk?

The 2nd of the Washington Post editorials today deals with an issue that’s no surprise to my neighbors and I: Washington, DC has the 2nd worst commute in the nation. Northern Virginia, especially, is growing increasingly bad and desperately needs a multitude of improvements to help things out. Our Governor Kaine, sitting on a $4 billion surplus, talks about needing to levy additional taxes but the polls consistently show that Virginians won’t support that. The Post’s editorial talks about Kaine’s new tone in the debate wherein it appears Kaine has finally decided to take those poll numbers seriously. So far, no one’s explained to me the need to raise my taxes when $4 billion is sitting in the Commonwealth’s bank accounts. But there’s an additional problem with the poll questions they ask when they make the determination they have.

I know what they’re asking because I’ve been asked before, myself: Would you support an increase in taxes to pay for needed transportation improvements in your area? A few years ago we had a referendum on just this issue and the suggested tax got shot down so big I’m amazed the fireball from its impact with the ground didn’t light up the sky in Hawaii. The problem then wasn’t that people didn’t think the improvements weren’t needed. Many of us didn’t even have too much of a problem with the tax hike. Where I had a real problem was that the suggested tax revenue would not have been protected, by law, from being raided for other expenses. It’s happened before, and until I know it can’t happen again, I’m not going to say I’ll support another tax increase. Not even for transportation. That’s the problem with these polls – the questions don’t take into account the reason for the lack of support. It might not be that people are unwilling to pay for the improvements, it could just be that they don’t trust the Governor’s office to spend the money like they say they will.