DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9710310014

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: BY JOSHUA P. DARDEN JR. 

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

GILMORE STANCE RISKS BRINGING ROADWAY GRIDLOCK

It troubles me, and many others who care deeply about Virginia's economic future, that gubernatorial candidate Jim Gilmore recently expressed to The Washington Post his opposition to former Governor Baliles' 1986 transportation initiative.

By way of background, shortly after taking office in 1986, Virginia Gov. Gerald Baliles created and directed a special commission of citizens and legislators to confront the challenge of ``charting a course to lead Virginia into the 21st century.''

Governor Baliles asked this group, known as the Commission on Transportation in the 21st Century (COT-21), to determine the commonwealth's critical transportation needs, explore alternative means of financing needed improvements and examine the feasibility of establishing a separate highway-construction fund.

As chairman of COT-21, I had the privilege of leading a commission composed of some of the best minds in Virginia government and business, including five former governors, Republican and Democrat. Don Beyer, Gilmore's opponent for governor this year, served on that commission and was heavily involved in and supportive of COT-21's findings.

The commission's charge was not to find a way to tax Virginians in an onerous manner. It was to perform the difficult but meaningful work of carefully evaluating Virginia's real transportation needs and finding a prudent, responsible way of meeting them.

It would have been easy to ignore the overwhelming evidence that with no additional investment our future mobility and economic prosperity would be severely impaired. A politically correct response, which seems to reflect Gilmore's current position on such issues, would have been to say we can meet our goals without additional investment or to count on the federal government to somehow find billions of additional dollars to pour into Virginia.

Showing genuine leadership, Governor Baliles wasn't interested in ignoring the facts or in political correctness. He was interested in getting at the truth and developing realistic, affordable solutions. That is what we did.

Working together, the bipartisan COT-21 made a series of recommendations in August 1986 that included a three-fourths of 1 percent sales-tax increase, a 4-cents-per-gallon tax increase and new flexibility for localities to raise revenues to meet their transportation needs. Not all of the recommendations were adopted by the special session of the General Assembly that August, but a bipartisan consensus was achieved.

The result was a package that to date has generated nearly $5 billion, some for maintenance but most for new road construction. It is hard to conceive of where we would be today if COT-21 had not been in place to ensure that these roads, and many others so important to our economy and quality of life, had not been built.

How can one put a price tag on this investment, or the many improvements that have resulted and will result from this revenue stream in the future? A couple of things are certain:

Statewide mobility has resulted in significant economic growth, creating many new job opportunities and making Virginia a more affordable state in which to live than many others in our nation.

The economic and quality-of-life benefits of these transportation improvements far exceed their actual financial cost. Indeed, these investments have contributed greatly toward fulfilling COT-21's mission of preparing Virginia to enter the 21st century.

We still have billions of dollars in unmet transportation needs, but without the money generated by COT-21, Hampton Roads would be in virtual gridlock.

As we near the year 2000, we have a choice between a candidate who strongly supported a program that has meant so much to Virginia and one who would have vetoed it.

Virginians have an opportunity to choose between two contrasting views on transportation when they vote for their new governor on Nov. 4. If they share the view that meeting those needs is vital to Virginia's future, the choice is clearly Don Beyer. MEMO: Joshua P. Darden Jr. is a Norfolk businessman.

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