Upon further review, and in light of constituent feedback, Prince Edward County's representative in the House of Delegates, James Edmunds II, made a U-turn on the Governor McDonnell-touted, General Assembly-approved state transportation plan.

Like an NFL official reviewing a call challenged by a coach, Edmunds took another look at the A Future For Urban Virginia, Nothing For The Rurals funding package.

Well, it's not totally accurate to say rural Virginia got nothing. Rural Virginians with alternative fuel or hybrid vehicles were given annual $64 fee, fine, tax, penalty for owning such vehicles.

And that was about it.

Like Seinfeld re-runs, the transportation package is a show about nothing when it comes to rural Virginia and Edmunds, who had previously felt the plan was worth supporting because it could have been worse, concluded that the plan was worse enough as it is.

“After hearing from many of my constituents, today I voted against the Transportation Bill,” Edmunds said in an email sent on April 3, the one-day reconvened session during which the General Assembly considers bill amendments.

“This bill was rushed through the General Assembly in February and I was a little misinformed about how this money would be secured for transportation. Not to mention there are fees that unfairly target buyers of new vehicles and hybrid vehicle owners, among others,” the delegate said, making a refreshing and honest admission, and reversal, and being unafraid to do so publicly.

“Transportation must be addressed but I believe that a bill that only benefits a small segment of Virginia's population is not the answer. While most of Virginia's transportation needs are in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads,” Edmunds continued, “rural Virginia has maintenance needs and bridges that cannot be ignored and none of these were addressed in the bill. Not to mention there is no guarantee that the money generated will actually go to transportation. For these reasons and others, today I opposed the Transportation Bill.”

Yeah, we got nothing and are supposed to like it. The great fear is that though we loathe it we may have to start getting used to it.

Consider what Edmunds told The Herald about his then-support of the transportation plan during a previous interview during the legislative session.

“I spent a tremendous amount of time reviewing this bill and looking at the implications of it,” he said during an interview at the end of February. “And, you know, the easy vote would have been to vote No and you know that it would have still passed and I go home and…have done nothing to address the problem.”

Further review by the delegate, in addition to constituent feedback, found him voting No last week, the bill passing, the delegate going home and nothing, really, has been done to solve the problem of transportation in rural Virginia.

That is not Edmunds' fault, however. Rural Virginia lacks the legislative numbers, and therefore votes, to force through the kind of transportation package that would address urban and rural needs.

Unless the governor of Virginia makes rural Virginia a priority, and invests his or her own political capital to attract enough urban votes in the legislature, little or nothing his going to happen for us. The new transportation plan is ample proof of that.

The only positive for rural Virginia is that funding continues, for now, to be based upon road miles, rather than switched to population, or road use. But that is surely a hollow victory. That formula still produced nothing of real meaning in the transportation plan for our rural communities.

Some urban legislators tried to make that change in the funding formula but decided simply giving us nothing and their own communities everything based on the existing funding formula was just as good.

“The only reason it didn't (change),” Edmunds told The Herald, “was because of…some relationships that some of the urban guys had with a few of our rural guys, because they can out-vote us now. When urban Virginia wants to out-vote rural Virginia they can do that after last year's redistricting.”

Edmunds was not alone in believing, at least during the session, that supporting the transportation plan was strategically necessary. Fifteenth District State Senator Frank Ruff wrote this in a recent newsletter: “On transportation it is most important to understand if we in rural areas were not part of the solution, next year Northern Virginia and Tidewater would be back to change the current formula for our roadway system. Presently, districts are funded based on a formula that considers the lane miles in the district. Growing regions already want to change that to vehicle miles driven. Such a formula would suck maintenance dollars from rural districts.”

What maintenance dollars?

-JKW-