One of thie big debates in advance of the General Assembly session is on something called “Devolution”. It’s kind of a wonky debate and I think I’ve got a handle on it but I might get some of the pieces not quite right. The debate has to do with who takes care of the secondary road system and who pays for it. The division of respobsibility is along County/City lines.
As I understand it, in the 1930’s the State created the system for road maintenance that we currently use. The State simply assumed responsibility for maintaining the secondary road system in the Counties. You’ll see VDOT trucks and employees working on the roads in the Counties. Now, for the cities, they created 2 funds: a urban capital fund and an urban operating fund. They did this as they directed the cities to maintain the secondary road system within their borders and agreed to pay us to do that. This is the system we currently use. I don’t believe there has been much, if any, money in the capital fund for awhile. The operations fund is still there but, as evidenced by the condition of our roads, is underfunded. Given economic conditions, that isn’t unexpected.
The proposal, as I understand it, is to take all of the urban money, put it into a pot with some other VDOT money and push the responsibility for all local road maintenance to the local level: cities and counties. The Counties are, understandably, not exactly wild about this as they would have to stand up this capability and that’s a lot of work. Cities don’t like it as they don’t want their pot of money mixed up with anyone else’s. There’s also some concern about how efficient it would be and the impact that the absence of some central planning would have.
I suppose that, as a philosophy or approach, devolution doesn’t bother me. I have concerns about efficiency but VDOT hasn’t exactly been a model of efficiency so a different approach might make sense. A hybrid approach where more urban counties have to assume responsibility might make sense. Our City already does the work anyways so it isn’t anything new for us. We already have staff, trucks and all the other stuff so it’s a question of who pays for it. Most states appear to use hybrids.
I will say that we need to have this discussion with our eyes open though. The elephant in the room is money. If the state is going to mix all of the pots of money together, they have to make sure that there’s enough money in there to get it done. At least to start with! What happens with these deals is that, over time, the state will transfer an increasing part of the responsibility for funding this to the localities. Localities don’t ever like it but we’re used to it.
What does bother me is that we’re having this policy discussion about increasing local responsibilities in the context of the elimination of significant local taxes. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I’m not wild about over-reliance on the property tax. I don’t think that ends well.
