I look for the many posts and comments saluting not just Del. Marshall, who, for all his eccentricities, was consistent and correct on this one, but also Senator Chichester, one of the few clear-sighted constitutional and fiscal conservatives who saw the problem with this conservative-lite abandonment of responsibility in an election year.

Chichester always preached matching appetites to revenues and suffered little foolishness from those who lacked the political backbone to pay for the Commonwealth’s bills. The current crop of cartoon conservatives had the appetites, but not the discipline or conviction to manage the Commonwealth’s budget responsibly. They panicked when they saw that the voters were sick of inaction on transportation and tried to build themselves and election year bomb shelter. Chichester got a lot of abuse from those who bridled at his insistence that appetites had a price and that the bill had to be paid. I expect that many of those folks will now recant for their vilification of a steady voice for conservative fiscal policies. (I also expect the Easter Bunny to hop through my back yard this morning).

Now it’s back to the drawing board on transportation (at least the funding side). The years of ducking these challenges by pretending they don’t exist or passing the buck to someone else may be at an end.