Here we go again. Remember the election this past May on Prop 1 that was soundly defeated? Many people that were against that legislation said that once defeated, the legislature would come up with a better plan to raise dollars to improve our transportation system – Plan B. Well, to my surprise, both the house and the senate have each passed separate bills that do increase funding to improve our transportation system. Both plans raise about the same amount of money, though both go about it in very different ways.
The house bill relies very heavily on rearranging state spending priorities and does not increase revenue very much to provide additional dollars. The vast majority of the dollars come from decreasing spending in other places in the budget. This may be secure for the coming year, but it requires the legislature to go through the same sort of prioritization every year in order to provide a long-term, increasing stream of funding that road agencies can count on. In addition, few dollars go to improve public transit.
The senate proposes a 15-cent increase in the gas tax over the next three years and indexing the tax to the rate of inflation so that the amount of tax increases automatically as costs go up. They raise additional funds by proposing to rearrange spending priorities in the budget, but do not identify what other budgets will be cut. Some think that this is “too aggressive” an approach.
Unlike the house proposal, the senate bill does provide some additional funding for public transit. The senate bill also includes a mandate requiring that the state begin building roads that will last 50 years with some of the additional funding and requires legislative approval of these projects before funds can be spent. This would increase the cost of construction significantly and potentially result in the overall condition of pavements being worse – not better!
I think the senate approach, without the 50-year piece, is taking us in the right direction. I hope the legislature will go in this direction and eliminate the well-meaning, but ill-conceived 50-year component. It is not a done deal by any stretch of the imagination. If swift action is not taken by the legislature when they come back to work next week, it is possible the whole thing dies and we are on to Plan C. The more letters of the alphabet we have to use, the harder it will get!
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