Vienna's Steve Shannon, delegate for Virginia's 35th House District, said he is prepared again to help steer the issue of transportation funding through the byways of the 2007 General Assembly session, and although he hopes traffic will flow smoothly, he said he is prepared for detours.
"Transportation is the number-one issue in Northern Virginia," said Shannon, noting that it is also a major concern in the Hampton Roads area. Statewide, he said, transportation is under-funded by about $1 billion per year. "The governor [Tim Kaine (D)], in the last session, introduced a statewide plan that gets us close to that dollar amount," he said.
The initiative is being reintroduced this year, more or less intact, and Shannon said he and other Northern Virginia legislators will be working to push it through the House Finance Committee, of which he is a member. This could be the bill's biggest challenge, he said, noting that about a third of the delegates in the House have signed a pledge not to endorse any increase in taxes or fees. The State Senate has been more amenable to Kaine's proposal.
"My great hope is that we can replicate the way we passed the budget in 2004, which was with a spirit of bipartisanship in the House," said Shannon, adding that this would be necessary in order to pass a statewide transportation resolution.
However, in case the bill is again rejected, Shannon said, he has been working with a bipartisan group of Northern Virginia delegates to create a regional plan. This self-help bill would raise about $4 million through taxes and fees levied on Northern Virginia, and the money would go directly into the region's transportation coffers, without passing through Richmond.
SHANNON SAID HE IS ALSO working on a number of bills protecting the rights of crime victims. Last year, he was appointed to the governor's Commission on Sexual Violence, where he chairs a subcommittee on treatment and intervention. He said he wants to use his place on the commission to introduce a bill that would allow courts to use the initials of victims of sex crimes in court documents, rather than their full names. Victims "are often horrified to find their name is in the pleading document" when defendants appeal their cases, said Shannon, adding that the documents may turn up on a Google search for the victim's name.
He would also like to protect such victims' history from unnecessary scrutiny by expanding the state's Rape Shield Statute. The statute, said Shannon, prevents a victim's sexual history from being brought up in court unless it is absolutely relevant, but it does not always apply in cases involving children.
Global warming is another problem Shannon said he would like to address during this unseasonably warm winter, with legislation that would mandate the collection of more local data on the subject. "We have very poor data," he said, noting that more information would help the state "start making some informed, long-term decisions" regarding land use and transportation.
Virginia also needs to establish more comprehensive service for people with autism, said Shannon. "The number of people with autism is ballooning right now," he said. "We're not sure of the cause, but we need to establish early intervention programs."
He said he also plans to reintroduce a bill proposing an additional senior income tax reduction, which he has brought up for the last couple of years.
This year, Shannon will be co-chairing a working policy group for the House Democratic Caucus with Del. Jim Shuler of the 12th District. The group, he said, has "spent a lot of time thinking about common-sense issues" that can be incorporated into a Democratic agenda. "We'll have them all rolled out in the coming week."