By Paige Winfield Cunningham

Virginia has an ultra-important job that officials say would have been considered shameful a few years ago.

That task is to nab as much federal money as possible for transportation, said Greg Whirley, commissioner for the Virginia Department of Transportation. In the absence of new funding, VDOT has struggled during the past few years just to maintain existing roads — let alone construct new ones.

This year, VDOT funneled most of its dollars into maintenance, leaving less than $100 million for construction. Even if the state continues that tactic, taxes won’t supply revenue fast enough, Whirley said.

That’s where the federal dollars come in.

If VDOT plays its cards right, the state can win more matching federal grants than ever before. That money will play an increasingly crucial role, as lawmakers appear less and less likely to approve a gas tax hike that Democrats and some moderate Republicans have been pushing for years.

But to win federal grants, VDOT needs to do a better job of identifying projects and getting them ready to go, Whirley said. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get the federal government to hand over money if VDOT hasn’t already done preliminary work and designated state funding.

That’s why Whirley says VDOT will be spending more money on preliminary engineering next year to make sure it has a list of projects ready for federal beneficence.

So far, VDOT hasn’t done a great job of lining up ready-to-go projects, Whirley said.

“Program your money on projects, because if you don’t, they will be deemed inactive by the federal government, and you won’t be able to utilize that federal funding,” he said.

Whirley spoke Thursday morning at a seminar, “What Everyone Needs to Know about Transportation Funding,” sponsored by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance. Director Bob Chase, who moderated the forum, said he recalls a time not long ago when Virginia took pride in resisting help from the federal government.

Now, federal dollars comprise VDOT’s single largest source of funding. This year, Virginia received $881 million from the federal government, about one-fourth of VDOT’s total budget.

VDOT’s second-largest source of funding is the gas tax, which has become a highly charged political issue. Chase, along with other officials who spoke at Thursday’s meeting, sounded a common theme: raising the gas tax, currently one of the lowest in the region.

Chase said raising the gas tax by 9 cents would just restore it to its original value in 1987, the last time the General Assembly approved an increase. In 1987 dollars, the current tax of 17 cents per gallon would be equivalent to just 8 cents, he said.

“Next year, it will be a quarter century since we’ve done anything about transportation funding,” Chase said.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw said he’s so desperate to raise the gas tax that he’d agree to sending half of a 1-percent sales tax hike to transportation — something he’d previously opposed because he doesn’t want to draw general funds away from education or social services. He’s emphatic that the revenue shortage isn’t a VDOT management problem; rather, it’s a political problem.

“This is a political issue and sooner or later someone’s going to have to have a backbone to do something about it,” Saslaw said.

Sen. Joe May, R-Leesburg, compared opponents of a gas tax hike to homeowners who don’t want to pay their gas or electric bills. Transportation needs to be treated as a utility, or Virginia isn’t going to compare favorably with her neighbors.

“I’m concerned when we cross the North Carolina line, we’re going to look like East Berlin if we stay on this track,” May said.

But Del. Tom Rust, a Herndon Republican who also supports raising the gas tax, says a hike is not going to happen anytime soon.

“To me, it’s black and white, but it’s not black and white to a lot of my colleagues,” Rust said. “I think we’re in a holding pattern for a year.”