Because I’m not that confident in the Washington Post printing a letter to the editor I sent them in response to their very poorly done story you cited above, perhaps you might be interested in reading it:

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To the Editor:

Your November 28 article (Kaine Starts Fresh Push For Transit Funding) displayed a seemingly intentional ignorance of the facts, telling only a fraction of the story, and worse, navigating to avoid relevant details directly related to specific points in the article.

Let me explain.

Your story says that Delegate Lingamfelter and I “helped defeat the major transportation proposals”, which isn’t correct, particularly since later in the article you cite MY legislation as the Governor’s “major slow-growth success this year”.

Lingamfelter and I helped defeat major transportation *tax increases*, an important distinction you didn’t make. There are many other transportation proposals that both Lingamfelter and I not only supported, but actively spoke out in favor of — far more of them we supported (like proposals to increase transportation spending in our region by billions with existing revenue) than those we opposed. We voted against tax increases, not transportation proposals.

What is particularly troubling in your article is the presumption it leaves that on all transportation related legislation, I was a major barrier to success. Yet, the fact remains that the most significant land-use (growth/development) reform passed and enacted into law in 2006 — strongly supported by and a major item in Kaine’s transportation package — was my HB 1513, a fact unmentioned in your article; a law that has already successfully halted the construction of 33,800 new homes in Northern Virginia; and a law the Post has written extensively about, identifying me as the sponsor of the legislation.

The Governor wants to have it both ways: he wants to take credit for my land-use bill which he signed into law and his administration is now actively using to help control growth in Northern Virginia, yet he also wants to say that I’m the major problem in getting his transportation proposals through the legislature. Which way is it? How can I be such a problem, yet be the sponsor of the legislation you characterized as his “major slow-growth success this year”?

Governor Kaine sounds like he is just looking for someone to place the blame on his own failure to provide any real leadership by working with the legislature to pass a comprehensive transportation plan for Northern Virginia.

The fact is, Governor Kaine said when he was running for his job that “we can’t tax and pave our way out of our transportation problem”, yet once he was safely elected, immediately reversed his campaign promise by proposing to do the opposite — to tax and pave Northern Virginia — by overtaxing our hardworking families to build beautiful 4 lane roads in other parts of Virginia that don’t need them.

My “no” votes on the Governor’s tax-hike schemes were votes against the same 74-year-old failed approach to transportation that got us into the transportation mess we now have in Northern Virginia. It’s time to get into the 21st Century with transportation, and that’s the approach I’ve voted “yes” on time and time again.

A fair and balanced approach would have included these details.

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