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Virginia elected officials thought they had taken politics out of highway funding when they adopted a new way of scoring and ranking transportation projects three years ago.

But maybe not in this election year.

With three statewide offices and the House of Delegates up for grabs in three weeks, a regional spat over highway funding caught fire Monday, as Secretary of Transportation Aubrey L. Layne Jr. took aim at Republican political leaders in Southwest Virginia who have accused Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, of doing too little to fund critical road projects in their region.

Layne told the House Appropriations Committee that critics want the state to find more money for the Coalfields Expressway through three Southwest Virginia counties, even though the state already has spent more than $100 million for a related bridge between Virginia and Kentucky that isn’t connected to roads on either side of the border.

“It’s the tallest bridge in Virginia, and it doesn’t connect to anything,” he told the committee, whose members wondered aloud how that could happen.

“Quietly,” answered Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William, who is facing a tough re-election campaign in Northern Virginia’s traffic-clogged suburbs.