Kaine signs bill to repeal abusive driver fees, give refunds

By BOB LEWIS

RICHMOND, Va.

The daunting fees on abusive Virginia drivers is officially a thing of the past. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed legislation repealing the law Thursday.

The repeal, passed as emergency legislation by the General Assembly earlier this month, took effect immediately upon the governor's signature. Anyone who has had the fees assessed will be given a refund.

Legislators in both parties clamored to end the fees that usually top $1,000 after Virginia residents last summer angrily protested an exemption from the fees for nonresidents.

The version introduced by Sen. R. Edward Houck was the first bill filed this year — Senate Bill 1.

Kaine called for its repeal in January after reports that the fees came nowhere close to generating their expected $65 million a year for highway maintenance and highway deaths continued to mount.

"After six months of implementation, it was clear that the fees did not improve the safety of Virginia highways," Kaine said in a statement his office issued announcing his signature.

The "civil remedial fees" was one of three prominent fixtures in the 2007 transportation funding law that have since been voided.

Regional packages of higher taxes and fees for highway projects in northern Virginia and Hampton Roads were struck down last month by the Virginia Supreme Court. The court ruled that the taxes were unconstitutional because they were imposed in both regions by unelected authorities.

Lawmakers will attempt to reconstruct the regional transportation authorities and consider a new statewide proposal for funding highway maintenance in a special legislative session Kaine intends to call later this spring.

"This was simply the wrong way to go about funding transportation. And today is the day we correct all that," Houck, D-Spotsylvania, said in Kaine's news release.