The Virginia State Legislature is receiving well deserved scorn in and out of state for passing an irresponsible revenue measure deceitfully advertised as a safety measure. The Old Dominion has long neglected its deteriorating and increasingly clogged roads and highways, and with traffic volume and needed repairs making it impossible to avoid major expenditures any longer, legislators have been searching for ways to raise funds. The obvious, efficient, fair and responsible approach would be to raise gasoline taxes…a couple of cents a gallon would probably do the trick, distribute the expense equitably according to who uses the roads more, and include out of state drivers. But gasoline prices are high, and the elected pygmies in Richmond fear an electoral backlash against anyone who votes to make them higher. Never mind that higher gas taxes are a good idea anyway, because they will encourage the use of more fuel-efficient cars. And forget about the duty of elected officials to do the right thing even when their constituents may oppose it out of self-interest, ignorance, or bad judgement. The objective in Virginia, it is clear, is to increase revenue without losing too many votes---no matter who else gets hurt.

Thus the Virginia pols passed legislation, estimated to raise about 65 million dollars in the first year, that will mandate four-figure fines for certain driving infractions, like DUI and driving more than 20 mph over the speed limit. It seemed perfect; after all, who is going to be indignant about the state sticking it to dangerous drivers? And, best of all, the measure gave the legislators a plausible cover story, so they wouldn't have to tell interviewers, "Well, we really should have raised the gas tax, but frankly, we didn't have the guts." The threat of getting socked with thousands in fines would make the highways of Virginia safer!

Governor Tim Kaine signed the bill, and it is now the law. Suddenly, word is coming out of two other states with similarly courage-deficient legislators that the whopping bad driver fines have a juuust few drawbacks. The fines are an inconvenience to wealthy bad drivers but life-wrecking disasters for poor ones, who often have to choose between rent and feeding their families or paying absurdly high fines. The obvious choice: they don't pay the fines and lose their licenses. Then they have to choose between not being able to work or driving illegally. They pick driving illegally, and when they get caught, get hit with more fines they can't afford. New Jersey and Michigan learned that the unintended results of the fines-for-taxes trick includes a huge increase in unlicensed drivers and poor residents becoming poorer. Oh yes…and only about 50% of the fines can be collected, because the people who earn most of them are the people who don't have the money to pay them.

Astonishingly, all of this supposedly came as a big surprise to Virginia legislators, who apparently never bothered to examine what transpired in the two states that had already implemented this tax-avoidance strategy. If they had, they also would have learned that even though those states are unhappy with the results, there is no serious move to repeal the super-fines because the states' budgets are already dependent on the extra revenue. The burden of the fines is landing disproportionately on the poor and will continue to do so, because politicians can't muster the courage to pass a reasonable tax.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should, because exactly the same forces were at work in the decision by all but a handful of states to rely on state-run lotteries, rather than tax increases, to fund schools and infrastructure projects. Lotteries, as anyone who has visited a 7-11 convenience store knows, are over-whelmingly played by the poor and near poor (as well as the desperate, the gullible, the drunk and the stupid) who spend money they can't spare on the remote chance of striking it rich through pure luck. Dozens of studies confirm that this tax substitute is disgracefully regressive, tricking the poor into giving money to the state "voluntarily" when the responsible course would be to pass new taxes that would be primarily paid by citizens with substantial resources. But those citizens have the time and resources to organize, create committees, and vote representatives out of office for raising taxes. The poor aren't going to complain because they get the chance to be rich, even if that chance is really just an illusion to make money for states.

Courage is not truly an ethical value, for one can be courageous in the pursuit of evil as readily as for good. But courage is a character trait that often becomes essential for ethical conduct to occur, and the absence of courage, cowardice, creates nothing but opportunity for unethical behavior, passive and active. That Virginia's lawmakers would callously put the poorer citizens of their state at risk of financial disaster so that the elected politicos could avoid their duty of leadership, their responsibility to the public, and their imperative to do what is right even when it is unpopular indicates that cowardice, not courage, is the political norm in Richmond. As long as that is true, it would be foolish to expect any ethical decision-making in Virginia's capital. As for the other states, the popularity of state lotteries tells you that Virginia legislature is not an exception, but the rule.