Various politicians are talking about “different ways” to fund transportation. Among them, Speaker Bill Howell, who says it will take awhile.

“There’s no way to fix all this in one legislative session,” Howell said, indicating it may require a multiyear strategy from legislators.

Howell, who is drafting his own proposals to address transportation, said the legislature must restore the Transportation Trust Fund before anything else can really be done.

Although money from the trust fund is supposed to be spent only on transportation, the legislature in recent years has had to raid the fund to balance spending in the rest of the budget.

Reviving a buzz word from the 2000 presidential race, Howell said the legislature needs to create a “lock box” to “assure people that the money that goes into the trust fund is going to transportation.”

The question I have is was Howell one of those lawmakers who voted for budgets that raided the transportation trust fund? Anyone know?

This little story is worth mentioning.

Tammy and Steven Pyle’s daughter decided to be born at rush hour. And that brought the Round Hill couple face to face with the harsh reality of Loudoun County traffic.

Due to some complications with the birth, Tammy had to be taken to Loudoun Hospital Center in Lansdowne via ambulance. Luckily, the sea of vehicles on Route 7 parted just enough to let her through.

The father-to-be, who tried to follow the ambulance in his car, wasn’t so lucky. “He was absolutely frantic … he almost missed the birth,” said Tammy.

Steve Pyle made the 20-mile trip in about an hour.

Increasingly, folks in places like Loudoun County, where growth is exploding are using the public safety argument to make the case for transportation investment, i.e., higher taxes to build roads and transit systems that will ease traffic congestion. The story above is actually one of the more benign. Loudoun officials have told some residents there that they fear if traffic isn’t addressed soon, there will increasing incidents of ambulances unable to get critical patients to the hospital. That will likely make young couples who are streaming into the fastest growing county in the country afraid that their children or aging parents will not be able to get treated in a timely manner. And if you’ve ever sat on Route 7 almost any time of day, you can imagine the unimaginable.

Virginia Senator George Allen is making plans for a rough and tumble re-election in ’06.

Taking no chances in girding for a re-election bid, Sen. George Allen picked as his campaign manager a veteran of three tough Senate races this year.

Jason Miller managed the campaign of Republican Jack Ryan of Illinois, who quit amid allegations of sex-club visits, and was a top consultant to the campaigns of Mel Martinez in Florida and Tom Coburn in Oklahoma.

Miller is “an experienced professional who knows how to mobilize supporters and reach out to new voters to create winning coalitions,” Allen, R-Va., said in an announcement yesterday.

Yet the person who really will run Allen’s re-election campaign, added analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, will be Dick Wadhams. He will join Allen’s Senate office next month as chief of staff.

Wadhams managed Republican John Thune’s campaign that unseated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota last month.

The hiring of Wadhams “was a double signal, to Warner and to [Senate Majority Leader Bill] Frist and other candidates for president, that Allen’s going to play hardball,” Sabato said. “You hire Wadhams when you’re going to tear your opponent’s guts out.”

Everybody wants to give run on tax breaks.

[Presumptive Republican candidate for governor Jerry] Kilgore met with his 31-member task force on regulatory reform and economic development, which recommended proposals that reflect such articles of faith within the GOP as lower taxes and less red tape.

The panel urged, among other things, repeal of the estate tax; tax breaks to jump-start the ailing rural economy; limits on sales and use taxes to promote film and television production, and tax credits to boost research at public colleges and universities.

…Kaine recently rolled out a plan to help small business cope with the escalating cost of employee health care. At the heart of the proposal: a tax credit of up to $500 per employee that would reduce state tax collections by more than $200 million.

The full cost of the Kilgore package, elements of which he will propose to the 2005 General Assembly, could not be immediately determined. However, estate-tax repeal alone – both gubernatorial candidates favor the idea – would cost at least $100 million.

In 2003, Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner, a multimillionaire, vetoed a rollback of the tax on estates of $1 million or more, saying that it would further weaken the state’s then-fragile finances.

But with the economy rebounding and Virginia amassing a surplus that could exceed $1 billion, the Republican-controlled legislature may face election-year pressure to finally erase the estate tax, which can reach 16 percent.

The Kilgore task force was created in July and is made up largely of business and professional leaders, many of whom have ties to the Republican Party.

The panel also recommended taking steps to ease regulations on small business; provide additional funds to help finance small business in economically distressed areas; extend tax relief for coal companies that mine small seams; and fund training in Internet commerce for mom-and-pop firms in impoverished regions of the state.

Kilgore said in a written statement, “97.7 percent of the businesses in Virginia are small businesses. These businesses employ Virginians and provide the services that give us such a great quality of life. But all too often they are buried under an avalanche of new regulations from Richmond.”

I’d love to know where the “97.7 percent of the businesses in Virginia are small” comes from.

The state GOP may be the losers, but that doesn’t necessarily make the Democrats financial winners in the eavesdropping scandal. But this shouldn’t surprise you.

A Washington law firm will receive almost half of the $750,000 settlement that the Republican Party of Virginia and four other defendants have agreed to pay in an eavesdropping lawsuit filed by Democrats.

That means that each of the 33 plaintiffs, mostly current and former legislators, will receive about $11,000 in the settlement, Democratic sources said.

Some of the recipients are unhappy about the large legal fee, Democrats said.

The law firm of Williams & Connolly represented the Democrats, who filed the suit in U.S. District Court here seeking civil damages from the Republican Party and others involved in the eavesdropping scandal.

From a news round-up in The Washington Post (Third item):

Dena Schlosser, 35, who admitted killing her baby daughter by severing the girl’s arms, was guided by Matthew 5:29-30, in which Jesus refers to cutting off body parts to cast away sin, Schlosser’s attorney said. David Haynes said Schlosser was mentally ill at the time.

Gee, if interpreting the bible literally is a sign of mental illness, we have a lot of Bush supporters who need to be institutionalized.

Meanwhile, Christians want everyone to be one.

In Terrebonne Parish, La., an organization is petitioning to add “Merry Christmas” to the red-lighted “Season’s Greetings” sign on the main government building and is selling yard signs that read, “We believe in God. Merry Christmas.” And a Raleigh, N.C., church recently paid $7,600 for a full-page newspaper ad urging Christians to spend their money only with merchants who include the greeting “Merry Christmas” in ads and displays.

…”Why not simply require stores owned by Jews to put a gold star in their ads and on their storefronts?” the Rev. Jim Melnyk, associate rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Raleigh, wrote in a letter to the editor.

It’s what we call the slippery slope.

Turnout was less than 23 percent but “[o]fficials had predicted a turnout of about 10 percent.” Miller, who replaces Thelma Drake, the conservative Republican who was elected to Congress last month, will need to run again next November. Ball, her opponent, said “supporters shouldn’t ‘throw their signs away yet.’” All six delegates representing Norfolk are now Democrats.

Paula Miller appears to have eked out a victory in the special election in the 87th district that includes Norfolk. The Virginian-Pilot is reporting tonight the former TV newcaster defeated the right-wing Republican Michael Ball by 92 votes, handing the Dems — and moderate Republicans who backed her — an important victory. Turnout was about 23%.

As Jeb Bartlet would say, “What’s next?” [Editor’s Note: Thanks to the reader “ReadMyLipstick” for catching my earlier typo on our mythical president’s first name.]

This has discouraged more than one candidate.

Sharon Pandak was all for running for the Democratic attorney-general nomination, all for talking about the issues facing Virginia’s next top prosecutor. What she wasn’t all for was spending so much time on fund raising. “I had miscalculated the amount of time that I would need to spend raising the funds necessary to be able to wage a viable campaign,” the former Prince William county attorney told The Augusta Free Press Monday afternoon. Pandak had announced earlier in the day that she was withdrawing her candidacy for the party nod.

Now here’s a pandering idea.