While the Virginia GOP controlled General Assembly found plenty of time to wage a legislative war against gays, women and minority voters, no meaningful plan was devised to address Virginia's huge transportation system deficiencies and what did get passed will saddle Hampton Roads with ultimately economy killing tolls. The first tolls will hit the Midtown and Downtown tunnels and isolate Portsmouth and parts of Chesapeake from Norfolk. In time similar barriers will likely be put in place to create a barrier between the Peninsula and south side Hampton Roads. What makes local residents so upset is other than the Dulles toll road, the expressway tot he Outer Banks and a relatively cheap toll road in Richmond, nowhere in the rest of Virginia is the state inflicting tolls on daily commuters. That burden is targeted for Hampton Roads alone. Now Patrick McSweeney and others are planning to challenge the toll plan which gives too much power to VDOT and bestows future financial windfalls on private developers. Meanwhile, Virginia's gasoline tax - one of the lowest in the nation - has not been raised in 25 years. Here are highlights from the Virginian Pilot:
Predicting they are in for a "long, bitter fight," an attorney who is fixing to wage battle against tolls at the Downtown and Midtown tunnels began to roll out his strategy Monday to hundreds of supportive residents.
Patrick McSweeney said he will file a lawsuit within days in Portsmouth Circuit Court to challenge the legality of the $2.1 billion transportation project the state agreed to in December with a private partner, primarily to expand the Midtown tunnel.
McSweeney said his case will rest on the argument that state legislators unlawfully delegated "unfettered power" to the Virginia Department of Transportation to craft the deal, which relies heavily on tolls.
He spoke to an estimated 500 people who crammed into a funeral chapel owned by state Del. Kenny Alexander, D-Norfolk, who retained McSweeney to work on the suit. . . . Several state legislators who represent Hampton Roads sat at the front of the room, and a few spoke briefly. Del. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, recalled for the crowd his criticism of the Midtown project, including the way it was signed without final public review and the fact that the Downtown Tunnel will be tolled with no expansion of its capacity.
But when Jones said he was still working on a way to bring down the cost of the tolls, people in the crowd shouted him down. They wanted no talk of reduced tolls.
"No!" they yelled. "No tolls! No tolls!"
As the project stands, tolls are scheduled to begin this fall at the tunnels, starting at $1.84 during peak travel times. That would cost a commuter nearly $1,000 a year, an expense critics say will cripple Portsmouth, divide the region and unfairly burden students, low-income households and other regular users.
Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has promoted the project as a way to get major, much-needed transportation projects funded with scarce public dollars.
McSweeney, a former state Republican party chairman, told the crowd he is not concerned about the policy debate over tolls. Rather, he said, he was focused on finding legal defects with the agreement, a thick, binded copy of which he held up for the crowd.
McSweeney successfully challenged a state transportation plan before, when he filed suit against a regional taxing authority in 2007. The Virginia Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the authority's taxing power, as granted by the General Assembly, was unconstitutional.
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