Lynchburg: Where dedicated local NoVa transportation money will be spent on education. Wait, what?

When the Virginia Supreme Court nullified the NVTA‘s ability to collect taxes earlier this year, it struck a major blow to Northern Virginia’s hopes for new infrastructure.

That was a few months ago. Since then construction projects have been put on hold and hundreds of millions of dollars have been returned to Virginia taxpayers. However, BeyondDC has it on good authority that:

1) While most of NVTA’s money was automatically refunded, certain pots of it have to be specifically claimed by individual taxpayers. Funds totaling several million dollars have not yet and are unlikely to be claimed, leaving NVTA with some fairly sizable amount of money leftover.

2) Thanks to an article in Virginia’s state constitution, all leftover money of that sort must be given over to an education fund that mostly benefits rural communities in southwest Virginia. So after the refund process is over, NVTA can’t even spend what money it has left, and must instead send it down to Richmond.

So, just so we’re clear, millions of dollars raised in Northern Virginia by Northern Virginians specifically for the purpose of locally funding transportation projects in Northern Virginia, is now being taken by Richmond for dispersal in southwest Virginia.

BeyondDC is all for education programs that benefit rural communities, but for goodness sake, this money was raised locally specifically because Richmond doesn’t pay Northern Virginia its fair share of state-wide revenue. Northern Virginia ponied up to create a dedicated local funding stream to pay for what should be state responsibilities, and what happened? The state swooped in, literally stole the cash, and left Northern Virginia to its wounds (and precious few new transportation facilities).

Welcome to the Commonwealth; the ridiculous, irresponsible, intellectually bankrupt, downright broken Commonwealth.