A year ago, Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne and Governor Terry MacAuliffe couldn’t wait to give Virginia Beach $155 million to help finance light rail in Virginia Beach. The only string was that the money had to be used for light rail. No Maglev. No roads.
A year ago, Virginia Beach agreed. City Council set aside $20 million dollars for engineering and for purchasing rail cars. The engineering studies were begun with everyone knowing that the result would be reliable cost estimates based on the actual plan. Everyone also knew that none of this would be done before 2017.
Virginia Beach even tried to get a bargain on light rail cars by agreeing to the state adding on to an existing order for Minneapolis. Aubrey and T-Mac agreed to hold Virginia Beach harmless if they decided against light rail by purchasing the cars at the state level and giving them to Norfolk instead. (Turns out, the cars were incompatible so the purchase never happened)
See. Last year, allowances were made for the possibility that City Council might not follow through with light rail, and no one threatened to pull that $155 million offer away.
That was because everyone knew the time schedule. When the engineering studies produce the costs, Council will then be in a position to accept proposals in line with those costs.
Suddenly this past month, Aubrey Layne got antsy and threatened to railroad City Council by taking the offered money back if Council follows through on a proposed referendum this fall on the issue. A referendum would show, Layne argued, that Virginia Beach wasn’t committed to light rail.
Problem is, until Council knows how much light rail costs, nobody is fully committed to anything. I don’t know if that’s the way Layne does business, but I don’t buy a cup of coffee without knowing if it’s two dollars or ten.
Days later, we learned the referendum was a red herring and that Aubrey and the Commonwealth Transportation don’t care if a referendum is held or not.
Now the rules are that Virginia Beach must sign a Memorandum of Understanding, but says nothing what the understanding must be other than “mutually agreeable.” The Virginian-Pilot reports that it doesn’t mean the city has to commit to constructing light rail, but the way Richmond’s demands have changed by the day, who knows what they will define as “agreeable.”
Oh, and they have to order the light rail cars. Deadline is April 30. If Virginia Beach does this, they can have a referendum with no impact on the funding.
I, and many others, suspect that this money is already gone, and what we are seeing is a frantic smokescreen to shift the blame to the beach in time to shift the dollars to Northern Virginia.
Several Northern Virginia members named other projects they’d like to see get that money, including adding another lane to Interstate 66.
“I’d have to think long and hard about letting that buck fifty five sit on ice,” said Gary Garczynski, a Northern Virginia representative. (Pilot)
Tell us about it, Gary.
The silent voice in this is Governor Terry MacAuliffe, who visited Virginia Beach frequently and happily stumping with the $155 million offer in hand. Now that talk is shifting the money northward, T-Mac is AWOL.
So, I don’t think the question is will this money be taken back. I’m convinced it’s already been promised and all that’s happening here is trying to get Virginia Beach to do something that gives them the blame. The question is why.
Why the big shift of support from last year to this year?
Is Virginia Beach being Fraimed or is this just a case of shifting Laynes?
