I have spent the last week digesting the Special Session on Transportation that delivered no relief (or the prospect thereof) to our traffic congestion problems. The result: I’m still angry.

While many journalists have spoken in detail about regional differences between rural Virginians without traffic problems and urban and suburban Virginians who are engulfed by them, a deeper and more fundamental issue is at hand. This issue will continue to prevent progress until a leadership change occurs in the House of Delegates.

Too many Republican members of the legislature have signed “no-tax” pledges. Like you, I don’t like taxes either. But like you, I recognize the difference between needed investment and wasteful spending. By any analysis, our transportation situation presents a needed investment. According to Republican Vince Callahan, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and probably the most knowledgeable Virginian with regards to our state finances, our state taxes are lower today than at any time since 1992. The only state tax increase in the past decade was Gov. Warner’s 2004 reform package, made necessary by the car tax relief promised but not paid for by Gov. Gilmore. The Dot.Com bust didn’t help either and elimination of the car tax was favorable to Northern Virginians, whose car tax rates were multiple times higher than those of other jurisdictions in the Commonwealth. That being said, Gov. Warner had a pretty big mess to clean up. Since then, we have eliminated the state portion of the tax on food, the estate tax, reduced the overall communications tax and various other taxes that impact Virginia families and businesses, all of which I supported. But when the time comes to raise the necessary revenue to invest in our transportation infrastructure, the House Republicans are stuck in a car that only has one gear: reverse. They can only reduce taxes, they can never raise them. While this may suit some people who dislike and distrust government, it is no way to operate what has been recognized by Governing Magazine as the Best Managed State in the country.

In a few short years, we will have no construction money for the match required to draw down federal highway dollars and will be a maintenance-only system. This would be a disaster for our region.

The House Republican response: study VDOT for the seventh time to find inefficiencies in an agency that is now over 90 percent on-time and on-budget with its projects. The other part of their plan: take future revenue generated by the Port of Virginia and the Airports Authority, even though that money is already being counted on to fund education, public safety and health needs. This is like taking a dollar out of one pocket, sticking it in the other and thinking you’ve made an extra dollar. How clever.

Look, here’s what’s really going on. Real solutions like the governor’s, which I supported, and the Senate’s, which I voted for after the gas tax was removed, were rejected in favor of the nonsense House Republicans put forth. They do this to stall in the hopes that redistricting in 2010 will save them. I hope the voters across the Commonwealth and the Northern Virginia business community will call their bluff and put their votes and their pocketbooks toward defeating obstructionism and supporting progress because these guys have got to go.