The back story on the next scrape over transportation is that eight, maybe 10 House Republicans could break ranks and support new taxes.

Really?

Some might because of politi-cal survival -- that it would discourage Democratic opposition next year, particularly in bright blue Northern Virginia.

You don't say?

Some might because they plan to quit -- that retirement in 2009 means there's little the shrinking GOP majority can do to punish them.

Is that so?

Some might because they want a solution -- that the future demands something better than the bubble-gum-and-baling-wire plan of 2007.

Who'd have thunk it?

Expediency, timing and principle can be powerful forces, but they may wilt against the institutional advantages of House Speaker Bill Howell and his anti-tax cabal.

A tax increase would first have to escape committee -- presumably Finance, whose 13 Republicans are among the most conservative in the House. For many, tax is a two-letter word: no. The committee's nine Democrats include a tax-raising gubernatorial candidate, Brian Moran.

Howell is not going to repeat his mistake from 2004, when he cleared the way for passage of Gov. Mark Warner's $1.4 billion tax increase for police, schools and social services.

Howell allowed several of the Finance Committee's most reflexive tax foes to duck voting. Del. Bill Janis, R-Henrico, no longer on Finance, was at another house -- his own, cooking waffles for his son's ninth birthday.

The absences allowed the Warner bill to reach the House floor, where moderate Republicans -- there are fewer now than there were then--eventually rebelled. They joined a fortified Democratic minority to push through the tax increase that transformed Warner from wimp to wunderkind.

This year, Howell added a weapon to his parliamentary arsenal: the creative use of the Rules Committee.

Rules is the traffic cop of committees, headed by none other than Mr. Speaker. Its small size belies its big influence. It has 15 members: eight Republicans, an independent who votes with the GOP and six Democrats, including one viewed by Republicans as one of their own.

This means Howell can shut down debate on higher taxes for roads and rails with the votes of less than a tenth of the total House membership, 100.

During the 2008 General Assembly, Howell routed through Rules a Democratic bill extending collective-bargaining rights to public employees.

The bill ordinarily would have gone to the Commerce and Labor Committee, dying in an instant. Instead, Howell sent it to Rules, which -- officially -- took no position, other than to kick it to the full House for a vote.

That put the House's 44 Democrats in an unpleasant predicament: choosing between the labor unions on which they rely for grass-roots support and the corporate big shots on whom they depend for green.

The result: a Keystone Kops-like kerfuffle among Democrats, and more ill will in a chamber where politics already is personal and mean.

On June 23, when lawmakers return for a third go since 2006 at long-term transportation funding, it could become more so, if politics is reduced to process.
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 649-6814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).