Government and Politics Notebook

- Capitol Hill: Report details links between Wall Street, lawmakers
- Virginia Politics: Virginia Organizing Project rally to address mental-health cuts
- Lieutenant Governor Race: Bowerbank talks jobs   Read more

Podcast | Advice on how to deal with the state-budget shortfall

Virginia Organizing Project economist David Shreve joins AFP editor Chris Graham in a discussion of the upcoming work by state lawmakers on the $3 billion state-budget shortfall. Shreve details a blueprint to dealing with the shortfall offered by the VOP in today’s podcast. Length: 15:08. Read more

Valley: Groups seek ruling against I-81 widening

Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

A coalition of advocacy groups that filed a federal lawsuit last year to block the proposed $11.4 billion widening of Interstate 81 filed a motion in federal court in Charlottesville last week seeking a positive judgment in the case.

“We have asked the court to require that (the Virginia Department of Transportation) fully evaluate alternatives like spot highway-safety improvements and increased diversion of freight traffic from trucks to rail, which would have much less impact on the communities, farms, history and scenic character of the Shenandoah Valley and the entire I-81 corridor,” said Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Coalition for Smarter Growth, which joined in the lawsuit filed in December aimed at preserving options for less costly and less destructive alternatives to a major highway widening on I-81.

The suit contends that a statute-of-limitations notice filed by VDOT and the Federal Highway Administration last year was an attempt by the agencies to prevent landowners and local governments on the I-81 corridor from enforcing a federal law requiring that alternatives to highway widening be considered in violation of the due-process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The plaintiffs’ group, which also includes the Shenandoah Valley Network, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Scenic Virginia, APVA Preservation Virginia, the Virginia Organizing Project, the Valley Conservation Council, the Rockbridge Area Conservation Council, the Sierra Club and landowner Larry Allamong, a Shenandoah County farmer whose property would be consumed by highway widening, are also challenging the failure of VDOT and the FHWA to incorporate into the I-81 project a component for multistate freight rail as mandated and funded by the Virginia General Assembly.

“Unless we succeed in our challenge, the Federal Highway Administration and VDOT will have a free rein to widen I-81 to eight or more lanes along its entire length, despite the objections of dozens of communities and thousands of people during the planning process,” said Megan Gallagher, the director of the Shenandoah Valley Network.

Door to door 300K

Item by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

The Virginia Organizing Project is going to be walking the beat this summer.

The VOP will be knocking on 300,000 doors this summer in one of the more ambitious civic-engagement projects I’ve heard about in recent years. Read more

Critics of Kaine roads plan coming out of woodwork

Item by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Perhaps Bob McDonnell missed something.

“While I have worked closely and in agreement with the governor on many important reforms for our citizens, I cannot support the governor’s tax and spend philosophy as outlined in his transportation plan,” the presumptive 2009 Republican Party gubernatorial nominee said in a statement released today addressing the transportation plan outlined by Gov. Tim Kaine.

Republican leaders had been talking up their suspicions that the Democratic governor was about to unleash a 10-cent gas-tax hike on the Commonwealth as his primary means of raising revenues for maintenance needs for days. Kaine did not include a gas-tax increase in his plan today, instead proposing an increase the existing motor-vehicle sales tax from 3 percent to 4 percent and an increase the statewide vehicle-registration fee by $10 annually. Read more