Advocacy Matters Newsletter

A periodic update on the Board of Trade's efforts to advance policies on your behalf, Advocacy Matters is distributed every 4 to 6 weeks to inform you of current efforts, upcoming events, and ways for you to make an impact. Subscribe

March 29, 2007

ADVOCACY ALERT

Please contact your Senators and Delegates in Richmond and tell them:

“The opportunity for final passage of a major transportation funding bill is now. Vote YES! on HB3202 on April 4th!"

Background

We have come so far. A major and critical transportation funding bill, crafted on a bipartisan basis, was sent to the Governor at the end of the 2007 General Assembly session. The only remaining step is for the legislature to approve the Governor’s amendments, which keep with the compromise that the General Assembly already approved. We implore legislative leaders (in both parties and both houses) to vote YES! on this milestone transportation funding bill on April 4th.

Our Message is Simple

The Board of Trade supports the Governor’s amendments to the legislation because:

• It provides new funds to be dedicated to transportation funding statewide that cannot be diverted for other purposes.

• It makes responsible use of existing General Fund revenues without doing any harm to the funding of other state responsibilities.

• The funds are ongoing and without a fixed termination date, i.e. not just a one-time bond package, nor mechanisms with sunset provisions.

• It provides upwards of $500 million per year in new money for Northern Virginia – funds controlled by and used exclusively in Northern Virginia.

• It significantly increases funding for transit across the state, including the $50 million match needed for the securing the $1.5 billion in federal money over 10 years should the federal legislation pass.

Please call or email your legislators before April 4, 2007 and ask them to support the largest investment in critically needed transportation infrastructure in over 20 years!

Don’t know who your legislators are or how to contact them?
Click here.

Questions?

For more information, contact Nancy Reed, the Board of Trade's government relations director for Virginia, at nancyreed@bot.org.