Can members of a new organization empowered to combine new tax revenue with bonds and tolls to solve the region’s transportation problems hold it together and fulfill the General Assembly’s mission for them?

Thursday’s second meeting of the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission gave no clear answer, but Suffolk’s top elected official believes the group can succeed.

“I think this body can be successful, and I think it will be successful,” Suffolk Mayor Linda Johnson said.

The commission’s voting members include Johnson and 13 other representatives of Hampton Roads localities, as well as five state legislators including Suffolk’s Delegate Chris Jones.

During 2013’s General Assembly session, Jones was a key architect of the commission and the expected $200 million annually in new tax revenue for it to spend.

“I think we have to remember the legislators created this — they created the funding,” Johnson said.

The tax revenue would fund a variety of projects, including some with vital importance to Suffolk.

The commission’s nine roll-call votes at its June organizational meeting just to elect Chesapeake Mayor Alan Krasnoff to the chairmanship, together with bickering over bylaws, have highlighted a parochial tone to the group’s first two meetings.

Chesapeake Mayor Alan Krasnoff, the commission’s chairman, was often frustrated during Thursday’s meeting as members deviated from the agenda, including over his appointment of five members to a finance committee that includes Sen. Frank Wagner — also the commission’s vice chair — as committee chair, and Poquoson Mayor Eugene Hunt Jr. as vice chair.

Krasnoff came to the meeting with his appointments in hand, a point of consternation for some of the members. Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright called a committee to scrutinize the bylaws, backing off when Krasnoff assured him he would make no further appointments until members feel comfortable.

“The urgency is $712,000 a day — that’s what we lose if we don’t get this done,” said Krasnoff, pushing to assemble a finance committee that will prepare a budget that needs to be approved before the commission can start doing its job.

VDOT District Administrator James Utterback detailed the commission’s financially unrestrained projects schedule, including widening Interstate 64 on the Peninsula and Southside, the third “Patriot’s” crossing, I-64/I-264 interchange improvements and — the most significant one for Suffolk — the U.S. Route 460/58/13 Connector.
Debate ensued on how the commission could — and whether it should — add or remove projects, with Delegate Johnny Joannou and Wright angling for a new bridge in Portsmouth.

The projects were selected by applying a prioritization process and statutory criteria to the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization’s nine board-approved projects, said Camelia Ravanbakht, interim executive director of the organization.

HRTAC and the HRTPO share a majority of members. The commission can tap federal dollars only for projects the groups agree on, said Tom Inglima, the commission’s legal counsel.
“We want to get the most bang for the dollar,” said Sen. Wagner. “To do that, we are going to need every state and federal dollar we can get our hands on to reduce what we are pulling out of the fund.”

According to a tally prepared for the HRTPO, out of the 14 localities, Suffolk taxpayers have been the seventh-largest contributors to the Hampton Roads Transportation Fund for the fiscal year through the end of May.

Suffolk citizens have paid in almost $5.77 million of the fund’s $125.73 million — excluding interest earned — or less than 5 percent. The largest contributor, populous Virginia Beach, has contributed more than a quarter of the money so far.

Speaking after the meeting, Johnson backed Wright’s original call for a committee to look at the bylaws.

She also indicated she would vote with General Assembly members, as she did during the organizational meeting, noting that Delegate Jones “was the author of the bill” creating the new revenue and the commission.

But Suffolk — and Hampton Roads, in general — are depending on the various members of the commission coming together, she added.

“We need to succeed, and we need to get it together, the legislators and mayors and chairs, and have that common focus,” Johnson said.

“If we don’t, that would be the unraveling. But I can’t see anyone here, who has invested in this, would let that happen.

“You may hear some growling and grouching, but at the end of the day, we’ll get the work done.”