When Virginia lawmakers set aside dedicated annual funding for Metro for the first time ever two years ago, most elected officials and business leaders proclaimed the deal a sweeping success — but in Northern Virginia, there was a catch.
The region secured a windfall in the dedicated funding agreement, scoring $154 million for the transit system’s dire maintenance needs and picking up a powerful talking point in the bid to convince Amazon.com Inc. to bring its second headquarters to Arlington. Yet legislators only managed that sizable dollar figure by pulling away tax revenues that previously helped pay for road improvements and other large transportation projects around the region.
For most Northern Virginia officials, the tradeoff was worth it to stabilize Metro. But now that arguments over the deal aren’t quite so fresh, and the region’s Democratic caucus is newly empowered in Richmond, lawmakers look ready to send cash flowing back to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority once more.
“It’s hard for somebody who doesn’t live here to understand that Northern Virginia has some of the worst traffic in the country, and it’s tied to the economy directly,” said Phyllis Randall, the new chair of the NVTA and the chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. “But now we have legislators sitting on the transportation committees who simply understand what our rush hour traffic looks like...and we’re more optimistic, because they live here.”
The NVTA — which manages funding for major projects ranging from highway widenings to new Metro station entrances — doesn’t currently stand to get back all of the money it lost in the Metro deal. But several bills speeding through the General Assembly, including one backed by Gov. Ralph Northam and Democratic leaders in both chambers, would send at least another $45 million annually to the authority.
"Having these monies back gives us the opportunity to make sure projects stay on track," said Monica Backmon, the NVTA’s executive director. "But we will still experience delays because we can’t do everything."
That's why the NVTA and its member localities are all busy lobbying down in Richmond for an even more substantial funding increase. The authority is getting ready to update its long-range spending plans in June — a new infusion could be impactful.
“We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of projects put on hold because of this, ranging from what you’ll see from your driveway all the way to your workplace,” said Del. Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, a sponsor of one of the NVTA-focused bills. “The region has made a commitment and the region needs and wants control here.”
A $102 million hole
The NVTA landed its dedicated revenue stream as part of the landmark transportation funding bill passed under then-Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2013, using some regional sales taxes to generate around $300 million for the authority each year. The NVTA then uses most of that money to fund regional transportation projects (as requested by each Northern Virginia locality) and sends the rest directly to local governments for their transportation priorities.
Five years later, lawmakers pitched a plan to pull away about $102 million of that tax money to send to Metro instead, creating the conundrum that has Northern Virginia officials so concerned.
Northam responded to those fears with a compromise — he offered amendments that would let the NVTA keep that money, if lawmakers would agree to a different set of tax hikes to fund Metro. He proposed raising levies on hotel stays and real estate taxes in Northern Virginia, specifically.
But Republicans, who then still held narrow majorities in both the state’s House and Senate, refused. Led by then-Del. Tim Hugo, they rejected Northam’s changes, leaving the NVTA scrambling.
“When we lost that, it was a huge hit,” Backmon said. “It put us in the position of only being able to fund portions of projects, or saying, ‘Good project, decent score, but we’ll see what we can do in the next [funding] round.’”
In all, she estimates that the authority had to slash its plans by about $275 million over a six-year period, and lost myriad other opportunities to fund projects beyond that horizon.
For instance, Backmon points out that the NVTA allotted $250 million for Fairfax County’s efforts to widen Route 1 and add bus rapid transit down its median — that’s just a third of what the county will likely need to complete it. In Arlington, the authority has had to scale back funding plans for new Metro station entrances in Ballston and East Falls Church.
“It was a tacit agreement with Northern Virginia taxpayers that money collected from them would be used on a regional project in their area,” Randall said. “But when we lost that for Metro...that was somewhat of a breach of contract, the contract we made with taxpayers.”
The legislative fixes
Watts tried to address the NVTA’s funding woes with standalone legislation last year, but didn’t get much traction. Lawmakers were able to deliver some relief to the authority as part of broader negotiations over funding improvements on Interstate 81, but could only find about $20 million a year to send back to the NVTA in the form of gas taxes and fees levied along the highway corridor.
Once voters handed Democrats majorities in both chambers last November, putting the region’s uniformly Democratic representatives in new positions of power, the political landscape suddenly looked a lot more promising for the NVTA.
Northam took the first step, including new funding for the NVTA in broader transportation legislation. The governor’s efforts are broadly focused on raising the state’s long-stagnant gas tax to fund major infrastructure efforts (like the expansion of regional rail service via a new Long Bridge), but he also revived the tax increases that Republicans spiked two years ago to free up about $45 million annually for the NVTA.
Those bills are so long and complex that the NVTA matter is buried amidst scores of other transportation issues — for instance, Northam also wants to start charging drivers of fuel-efficient cars higher registration fees to make up for falling gas tax revenues, though that proposal has drawn some opposition from environmental groups.
Watts is backing standalone legislation that focuses specifically on the NVTA, with slightly different funding mechanisms. Her bill would bump up the same tax rates on home sales and tourism as Northam's, but by slightly smaller amounts. The rest she’d take from some transportation money directed to Northern Virginia localities without Metro service — like Prince William County and Manassas — and send it to the NVTA.
“We needed to be able to share the burden amongst all of the folks that have the needs and that will benefit from solutions,” said Watts, once the state's transportation secretary. Her bill could include Northam's proposed fuel efficiency fees to send more funding to the NVTA, but officials are still calculating just how much money that would generate.
Votes ahead
Watts’ bill just cleared a House committee to advance to the floor. Versions of the governor’s proposal are expected to win floor votes within the next few days as well, perhaps keying up negotiations to resolve the differences between the bills.
That’s left the NVTA pleased, but still wanting more. For one, Randall notes that the funding promised as part of the I-81 deal hasn’t materialized the way she’d hoped, falling far short of the $20 million the authority was counting on this year.
It’s difficult to predict if that will be a trend — Trip Pollard, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, notes that the I-81 legislation has only been in effect for a few months, and revenues could tick up at some point — but Randall would like to see more money from the state, just in case.
She doesn’t want to see anyone divert any money from Metro for that purpose, stressing that NVTA leaders “absolutely, 100% do not want to reopen the Metro discussion.” But she would, at the least, like to see some sort of mechanism pass to prevent the NVTA losing out on revenue in similar negotiations moving forward.
Pollard notes that lawmakers have long balked at setting such guardrails around transportation, but Watts said she’d at least stay open to the idea over the new few weeks of deliberations.
“I’ve asked for full input from anyone involved about how it can be strengthened,” Watts said.
