“If Northern Virginia legislators think by not issuing bonds to help pay for WMATA that they are stopping it, they may be stopping it, but the money is not going to be backfilled from the rest of the state,“ he said at last week’s meeting.

“There are already bills about not funding WMATA that are going to come. ... I get that, I understand that. It’s a big problem, and we’ve got to work through the problems.”

However, he said he would be “very leery” of committing the board to paying for WMATA out of general transportation funds and questioned a comparison made by another board member of the need to sell Metro’s merits to the promotion of the Port of Virginia when it was struggling.

“Is it true that Northern Virginia is an economic driver? Yes. Is it true that those people need to get to work? Yes. Does that affect jobs in the Salem District? Probably not,” Fralin said.

Layne said the retort to that argument would be that most of the taxes generated in Northern Virginia subsidize other parts of the state.

“The point is, the case needs to be made and it hasn’t been made. There’s rhetoric going on, but the case hasn’t been made,” Layne said.