Quid pro quo transpo

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Quid pro quo transpo				June 27, 2007

Although I lived many of my formative years in northern New Jersey, I never realized that the state constitution prohibits “idiots and the insane” from voting. You can imagine, then, how delighted I was to read in the New York Times last week that the state legislature, through a constitutional amendment, is now in the process of replacing that unfortunate phraseology with something more subtle.

The problem is that the word “idiot” has become so generalized that not all the idiots are in the asylum. They’re out wandering the streets and are drawn like metal to the magnetic lure of polling places whenever election time rolls around. Even worse is the fact that many of them have been elected to public office.

In one Rhode Island town, psychiatric patients who were found not guilty of homicide by virtue of insanity were nevertheless voting. One matey who voted every year claimed that Satan ordered him to kill two boys. How many votes the devil made him cast is unclear.

On the other hand, if you think that idiots and the insane are voting and in office only in the blue states, think again.

How would you describe supervisors or council members who, when presented with a bill, come out with statements like: “It stinks,” or “It’s ugly,” or “It’s a total mess” and then fall all over themselves to approve it? It’s like the guy who found a snake’s head in his green beans but thought the beans tasted fine. Hello?

Is the clarion call of Eastern State Hospital really so penetrating to the eardrums of these people? Or maybe the devil made them do it.

Yet, such was the case with the smelly transportation bill foisted on localities in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia by the House of Hauteur up in Richmond.

Because Sen. Tommy Norment and Gov. Tim Kaine told the wizards on Williamsburg City Council and the James City Board of Supervisors that this stench-ridden bill was all they were going to get, they gazed at the snake’s head and, with demeaning obeisance to dubious political authority, slopped up the swilly beans like hogs at a trough. And this despite the fact that more than 90% of the funds raised will go for transportation projects in places other than James City and Williamsburg.

This is not to say that there weren’t coincidental incentives offered from Richmond to sweeten the swill for the James City supes, who approved the plan on June 12.

In a letter dated June 12, Norment informed the supervisors that there was now afoot an interim plan to temporarily repair the Jolly Pond Road dam. He had worked things out with the dam’s owner, he wrote, and would introduce legislation in the next session to provide for exemptions to the stringent Historical Dams act. “I am hopeful,” said Norment, “that we can move forward with some dispatch to provide relief to those citizens who have been grossly inconvenienced for entirely too long.”

Entirely too long indeed. In fact, since last fall. And Norment is just now getting around to moving with dispatch and introducing legislation that will ease the situation? How convenient.

Also dated June 12 is a letter to the county from Pierce Homer, the Secretary of Transportation. In it, Homer pledges that in the FY 2008-2013 six year budget $10 million will be allocated for the Route 60 project in the southern end of the county. In addition, $5 million will be reserved for an upcoming grant request from the county and another $10 million for a pending loan request. “There now appears, “writes Homer,” to be adequate state and local resources to assure the completion of the Route 60 improvement.”

Isn’t that swell? And wasn’t the timing just perfect? Or at least Bruce Goodson thought so. Having agonized over his vote on the ugly transpo proposal, Goodson was now dervishly whirling because funds were suddenly blossoming for his pet road project. So out comes his aye for the swill bill.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the state is in dire need of funds to complete transportation projects. Nor is there any doubt, given the obtuse and intransigent makeup of the House of Delegates, that Norment and Kaine are probably right in terms of their take-it-or-leave-it pronouncements.

Devolution or the balkanization of the state, however, is not the answer. Making mini-states out of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia because of the inadequacies of a state legislature that should be dealing with a statewide transportation problem sets an extremely dangerous precedent. We are fools, if not idiots, for allowing the legislature to get away with it and for sitting by while local boards approve such shenanigans.

All states have transportation problems. Yet I know of no other state that has so shamelessly devolved its responsibilities onto local boards and ordered them to come up with money through a slew of onerous local fees if they want their transportation wounds bandaged.

As for New Jersey, they should probably leave their constitution alone. Let’s not add to the pool of idiots who are voting, to say nothing of those purporting to be legislators.