Warren County Report

The appeal is of Circuit Court ruling upholding, among other issues, the Virginia Legislature’s right to authorize appointed regional authorities to use bond issues as defacto taxes to pay for specific regional projects, in this case the building and improvement of roads.

Eight plaintiffs, including high-profile state Republicans Robert G. Marshall and Richard H. Black, initially challenged passage of the 2007 Transportation Act on a variety of Constitutional grounds from unauthorized transference of taxing authority to the inclusion of Civil Remedial Driving fees as a fundraising method of the Act.

Responding to the lower court ruling, the plaintiff’s argue in a brief filed on Nov. 27, “If the decision of the Circuit Court is correct, the General Assembly can delegate to unelected bodies or to private entities all of the taxing power that has been vested in it by the people.”

McSweeney argues that such authority would allow such appointed regional entities to tax a segment of the state’s population through bond issues without being subject to taxing restrictions placed on the legislature or local governments by the state Constitution.

“These authorities would be independent of the Commonwealth even though the only powers that they would exercise would be powers delegated to them by the General Assembly.  This cannot be the law,” McSweeney argues in his brief.  “It defies logic and common sense, ignores the history, structure and purpose of the Constitution of Virginia and runs counter to the obvious intent of the people who ratified that Constitution and emphatically rejected proposed constitutional amendments in 1990 and 1998 that would have eliminated the voter referendum requirement for tax-backed transportation bonds … The necessary implication is that the General Assembly can delegate neither its taxing power to unelected authorities nor the power to incur tax-supported debt, which the General Assembly itself is constitutionally prohibited from issuing.”

The high court’s decision will have a profound impact on whether citizens’ across the Commonwealth of Virginia must be taxed equally to support road improvements in specific areas of the state.
As the legal challenge of the Transpo Act surfaced, 18th District Del. Clay Athey commented that the Transpo Act’s funding method through agencies like the NVTA are a benefit to constituents like his, who more often live and work in more rural areas of the state and do not want to be taxed to pay for the massive road construction necessary in urbanized areas like Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

“But I can see where they’re coming from,” Athey said of the plaintiffs. “If I represented constituents from those areas I wouldn’t want them to have to pay for all that construction either – you’d want it passed across the entire state.”

At the root of the argument for the statewide tax for localized road projects is that urban roads benefit the entire state economically and even serve rural residents who may commute to those areas to work or travel them periodically for other reasons.