In an interview on Wisconsin Eye, Joint Committee on Finance Co-Chairs State Rep. John Nygren and Senator Alberta Darling were asked about their strategy for tackling the debt in the transportation budget. Senator Alberta Darling summed it up in the following clip:
I would like to unpack her statements and highlight several leaps of logic and address each:
“We’ll either look at delaying projects, we’ll look at raising revenues, and we’ll look at a combination of the two.”
See what is missing? Trimming back the scope of projects is not on the table. Why should projects be scaled back? For starters, highway projects are no longer good at growing the economy according to the most recent studies. Senator Darling also provides a compelling argument:
“But we have to look at the future. Most states bond over 25-30 years, that’s the life of a road. And so we can’t expect one generation to pick up the load for all these projects at the same time.”
Ok, those are the ground rules then, no dumping a lot of spending on the next generation. And next, Senator Darling gives us the perfect illustration of what can happen when you spend a whole lot of money on infrastructure in a short period of time:
“Unfortunately, these projects are all coming to fruition at the same time. “
Does that sound familiar? Yes, it is precisely what Senator Darling said we should avoid in the future. Why is Wisconsin dealing with a “highway bomb” at this time? Because leaders of the past ramped up spending on highways. Senator Darling reveals the thinking of the past that created this problem we face today:
“So those leaders in our state at that time said you know we really need to grow our infrastructure, we need to do what is right for our safety and to get people to work.”
And of course, that is exactly what the Joint Finance Chairs cite as the reason for the volume and scope of projects in the current budget.
“So they made that investment so it’s up to us to figure out what are we going to do to continue getting people to work in a safe way.”
So there you have it, according to Senator Darling we don’t want to create a highway spending bomb for the next generation, so what we are going to do is create a highway spending bomb for the next generation for the same reasons the last generation did it, whether or not those reasons are valid anymore. The only way to reduce the effects of a highway spending bomb is to stop expanding highways today, so the next generation will not have that many more lane miles to replace in 25-30 years.
If you are interested in following the budget, bookmark this link to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s recent publications. The Major highway part of he budget is due to pop up any day now.
