To pay for an expanded local transit network, local officials were banking on the ability of a new regional transit authority to levy local taxes and fees. The Board of Supervisors and City Council had planned to ask Richmond for enabling legislation in the 2009 session. But that concept took a serious hit February 29 when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority’s taxing ability unconstitutional because it came from a nonelected body. “It just means that one of our options is off the table,” says Harrison Rue, executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, which has led regional transit discussions. “We’re waiting to see what the General Assembly does. I’m quite sure that they will step up and make some kind of a fix. There’s too much riding on it, especially in NoVA and Hampton.” He’s hoping for funding on a statewide basis.
Thanks to a deal between Dominion Power, the State Corporation Commission and the attorney general’s consumer counsel, Dominion’s proposed plant in Wise County will move forward, but without as much of the guaranteed profit as Dominion expected. Despite Dominion’s claims that the plant would be carbon-capture compatible, the deal admits that it is not. Environmental activists say that the deal amounts to an admission by Dominion that it misrepresented the supposedly “clean-coal” plant to the public.
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