According to WISDOT, the next State budget will have $680 million more in planned transportation spending than is projected to come in from gas taxes.
Unfortunately the majority of the news coverage has missed the opportunity to address the imbalance by reducing wasteful project spending. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has called this issue one of the big jobs for next year. The only proposals on the table that would add money to the transportation fund are to move transit and the state patrol out of the protected transportation fund and into the general fund. Walker’s shift to funding transportation from sales taxes on gasoline will not increase revenue for the next budget. Vos has also signaled a willingness to divert more money from General Purpose Revenue into transportation.
All this is going to essentially increase the structural deficit by $680 million, and add to the pressure to make more cuts. The fact is that moving transit to the general fund will make it vulnerable to cuts, because as Vos puts it, “transit is a social program”. One can easily imagine any pedestrian and bicycling funding could also face a similar fate as the GOP pushes to ensure all gas tax money pays for is programs for the people who pay gas taxes.
So what is a progressive to do about this with an election only two weeks away? It is time to hold a rally to put this issue on the radar now, while elected officials are trying to gain an edge in the polls! On Tuesday October 21 at 11 am members and supporters of the Coalition for More Responsible Transportation in Wisconsin will be present at the Capitol to bring the issue of wasteful transportation projects and smart alternatives into public view.
UPDATE! Here are the details on location:
Wisconsin State Capitol Assembly Parlor
2nd Floor, West Wing, enter on left side of Assembly Chambers (room is not numbered)
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This is all good, but when we’re talking about roads, we need to keep in mind a couple things:
1) We ALL pay gas taxes; everything we buy gets to the store where we buy it on trucks, so gas and gas taxes are always part of the price.
2) A significant part of the cost of building and maintaining streets and roads comes from property taxes (and yes, renters pay property taxes for their landlords) and sales taxes: http://ssti.us/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/WI_Road%20costs%20report.pdf
Of course, there’s also that concept of having a society, where we all pay for things that we all use.
Yes, we all pay for transportation one way or another, so the costs of expansions impact us all, even if we never use the roads during congested times of the day.
We also all share in the economic results of projects. And since the return on highway investment isn’t producing what it used to in the 1960’s, even if you manage to escape paying for roads, chances are your long-term standard of living will be impacted by counter-productive priorities.