After decades of literal and figurative transportation gridlock in Virginia, there’s little doubt the mechanisms for funding road construction and maintenance in the commonwealth are broken. What’s not broken is the Constitution of Virginia, which places the responsibility for levying taxes and fees squarely on the shoulders of the state legislature.

A Portsmouth circuit judge on Wednesday affirmed the constitution’s preeminent role in setting the rights and responsibilities of the state when it comes to instituting taxes and fees for road construction. Judge James A. Cales Jr. ruled the General Assembly had acted unconstitutionally in allowing the Virginia Department of Transportation, through the Public-Private Transportation Act, to set tolls on the Midtown Tunnel without legislative oversight.

If it stands, Cales’ ruling, which Gov. Bob McDonnell has promised to appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, would nullify one of the most egregious portions of the agreement McDonnell’s administration made with the private firm already working to build a new tube to parallel the existing one.

Under the agreement — which would also toll the Downtown Tunnel and an extension of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway to Interstate 264 — regular commuters on any of those routes would pay $1,000 in fees beginning in 2014, with rates allowed to increase for more than 50 years in order to sustain a guaranteed annual profit of 13.5 percent to the private partner.

This particular agreement was reached without the input of the General Assembly, but legislators can hardly claim the high ground, considering that less than 10 years ago they set up their own unconstitutional scheme to fund highways in a manner that would have bypassed their accountability to voters. The state’s Supreme Court ruled at the time that lawmakers could not delegate their taxing authority to unelected regional bodies, and the transportation-funding debate returned to the recalcitrant houses of the General Assembly.

Since that last Supreme Court decision, the fate of Virginia’s highways has languished until this year, when an accord was reached that will result in a complicated set of new taxes and fees designed to raise about $5 billion in statewide and regional transportation funds.

This year’s legislation is imperfect, and there is reason to worry about some of the assumptions it makes regarding the funding sources — failure by Congress to pass an Internet taxation bill would result in a steep gas-tax increase, for instance. But by shouldering the responsibility for the tax increases themselves, legislators gave Virginia voters the chance to decide whether or not they approve of those actions and to register their appreciation or disapproval at the polls.

Such accountability is the reason the commonwealth’s constitution requires the General Assembly to take responsibility for taxes and fees. Any action that removes accountability from the equation — whether the action is taken by the governor or by legislators — must be vehemently opposed.

The only right way to fix Virginia’s transportation mess is in the full light of day and with the full participation of Virginia’s elected officials, acting in the full knowledge that they will be judged for their decisions, one way or the other.