Steve Burns
WMAL.com

RICHMOND – (WMAL) Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe knew it would be a tough sell, and now he is seeing just how difficult it may be to shepherd through tax increases in Northern Virginia to fund Metro.

“(Metro’s) problem is that they spend like a drunken sailor,” State Sen. Dick Black (R-Leesburg) told WMAL. “We don’t need to dump more money into that.”

Black sits in an important position, as one of the few Republican voices in Richmond coming from the region that would see a tax increase.

McAuliffe’s plan calls for increasing hotel, real estate, and wholesale gasoline taxes, while also combining transportation money already going to the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, to give Metro an additional $150 million annually from Virginia. However, the plan is contingent on Maryland and the District contributing more as well. Metro leaders have said the system needs an additional $500 million per year to keep it safe and reliable.

Metro needs to get its own financial house in order before asking for more money, Black said.

“Metro has absorbed tremendous funds from this area already,” he said. “It would slash away at our highway funds, leaving those with a tremendous shortfall. Most of our commuters use the highways, and while Metro is fine, we’ve got to maintain the highways and we can’t do it if we spend all the money on Metro.”

McAuliffe has also called for scuttling Metro’s current Board of Directors and temporarily replacing it with a smaller “Reform Board” to tamp down on finances and make other difficult decisions.

Black also called into question Metro’s current work to expand the Silver Line into Loudoun County, saying the system cannot be too poor if it is being expanded to “areas that are clearly not appropriate for expansion.”

However, Metro’s Silver Line expansion is being funded by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which Black later called “sleight-of-hand.”

McAuliffe also tries one last time to expand Medicaid in Virginia, something the Republican-controlled General Assembly has continually rebuffed. Black said expansion has not gone well in other states.

“There have been 31 states that did enact Medicaid expansion. In 22 of those 31 states, that expansion has contributed to budget deficits,” he said. “The idea that we would expand Medicaid when the Medicaid program has had such bad results, and expansion has been so disastrous where it’s been tried. I would hope we don’t get into the same mess that has done so much damage in other states.”

Black also did not have kind words about McAuliffe’s plan to give pay raises to state employees in the second year of his budget.

“Of course, that’s long after he’s gone and long after he would have to pay for them,” Black said. “The Republican-controlled legislature has been very conscience of raising pay when we need to…when we promise those pay raises, it’s not just an empty promise because you’ll know that we have the money to pay for them.”

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