Political courage needed more than task forces
By Roy Ockert Jr.
May 5, 2015
Another task force has been formed to study ways to address the lack of highway funding in Arkansas, and you can bet that it will produce nothing new. The bottom line, as always, will be: The state needs more revenue to maintain its highways.
And the answer, as always, will be: We don’t want to pay for it.
Instead, let’s wait for Congress to give us more money.
Good luck with that.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued an executive order last week, creating the Governor’s Working Group on Highway Funding. The group will consist of 20 people including the state highway director, a highway commissioner, several elected officials, other state officials, a representative of the state Chamber of Commerce and eight appointees with “knowledge of the transportation and-or finance industries” — all to be appointed by the governor.
The group will be charged with providing “recommendations to the governor for the state to create a more reliable, modern and effective system of highway funding” by Dec. 15, 2015.
We’ve already seen this movie.
The most recent version played in 2010 when the Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance, commissioned a year earlier by the General Assembly, made its final report. That report, along with a mountain of supporting supporting evidence, was posted on a special Web site, which has since been dispatched to Internet heaven.
The committee concluded that we could no longer depend on fuel taxes to finance our highway construction and maintenance and offered a variety of novel ways to produce more revenue.
The commission’s recommendations at least cleared the way for a couple of short-term fixes, including renewal of a bond issue to repair 400 miles of interstate highways and a temporary half-cent sales tax to fund a $1.8 billion road construction program. But a long-term solution remains elusive.
Voter approval of that half-cent sales tax, though, represented a departure from the traditional method of financing highways strictly through user fees to a general revenue method.
During this year’s legislative session Rep. Dan Douglas, R-Bentonville, offered a bill that would have shifted almost $2.8 billion in general revenues over 10 years to road construction. Douglas promoted his proposal as an economic development bill, but the idea didn’t go over well with the new Republican governor, who had already presented his budget, which included some promised tax cuts. Eventually, under pressure, Douglas withdrew his bill.
Nevertheless, Hutchinson surely recognizes the need for increasing highway funding. Anyone who drives or rides around Arkansas much, as the governor does, knows that we’re having a hard time maintaining our nearly 100,000 miles of state highways, local streets and roads, and bridges.
It’s easy to determine why. A research paper by Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute showed that gasoline consumption in the United States fell by 11 percent from 2004-13 even while our population grew by 8 percent. Going beyond earlier research, he found not only that our vehicles tend to be more fuel-efficient but that there are fewer cars on the road and we are driving less.
Raising the federal gas tax, which has been at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, is not only politically unpopular but also limited in effectiveness as consumption drops.
Besides, Congress can’t even get its act together long enough to approve a federal transportation bill, and that’s wreaking havoc on state efforts to finance highway construction. The federal gas tax funds the Highway Trust Fund, which provides money to the states for highway construction and maintenance.
Congress passed a temporary fix in 2012, but that funding expires on May 31, and there doesn’t appear to be a good chance for passage of a highway bill by then, just as the prime time for highway construction hits. Another short-term infusion of cash may be necessary while Congress debates three proposed transportation bills.
Meanwhile, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has had to suspend millions of dollars’ worth of construction projects because of the uncertainty of federal funding.
In a recent interview with Arkansas Business the agency’s director, Scott Bennett, explained the ripple effect on Arkansas.
“Delaying work means motorists feel it in their pocketbooks,” he said. “It costs more to operate a vehicle on poor roads, and it costs more to repair the road later. The work that’s not being done is work that would have been performed by Arkansas workers, so it also affects our citizens through lost jobs and wages. That could have a tremendous impact on families.”
I know I’ve hit a few potholes lately.
Bennett said further that the federal government has neglected the nation’s infrastructure for far too long. He’s absolutely right about that, and we’re now seeing the results. We must invest more money in ourselves and less in faraway places.
Already the state Highway Department has had to put on hold more than 60 projects totaling about $162 million because of funding problems. Bennett told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that number could soon climb to 120 projects totaling $490 million this year.
So the working group can study and study, but somewhere along the way we need our state and national leaders to find the political courage and take action.
Roy Ockert is editor emeritus of The Jonesboro Sun. He may be reached by e-mail at royo@suddenlink.net.