by Ron McLinden
Will Missouri address its transportation needs? Will it do so in a manner that makes sense? How should the Sierra Club respond to the package that ultimately comes out? Those are among the key questions we face. In fact, by the time these words reach your mailbox we might already know many of the answers.
At this writing, the Missouri House has just passed a $747 million per year increase in funding for transportation, and is sending it to the Senate. The House adopted the bill, Committee Substitute for HB 924, by a relatively close vote that closely followed party lines: nearly all Democrats voted Yea, nearly all Republicans voted No.
Prospects for passage in the Senate are not that good. Republicans hold a bare majority for the first time in decades, and they are not inclined to have their names attached to any tax increase – not even one that the voters of the state will have to approve at the polls. What’s more, Republicans and their Farm Bureau allies are still bitter about the failure of the “fifteen-year plan,” adopted back in 1992 during Governor Ashcroft’s administration as the justification for a 6-cent per gallon fuel tax increase that the General Assembly passed WITHOUT seeking voter approval. That “plan” – which many observers agree was not a plan at all but merely a hastily conceived package of promises developed with the very active involvement (as in, “You’ll get my vote if you include my pet project”) of many of the legislators at the time – was formally abandoned in 1998 because it was under-funded and could not be completed on time.
Governor Holden has made transportation one of his top issues, and sees this year as the best chance for getting additional funding. That’s a gutsy position for a new governor to take, especially since it would immediately get him labeled as a big-tax governor and undermine his chances for a second term.
Transit supporters, among whom the Sierra Club counts itself, are pleased that the proposed program would include $100 million per year for local bus and rail transit. That level of need was identified back in 1992, but was consistently ignored in the push for a big highway package. Now Missouri is considering a “total transportation” bill that includes transit, and most transit advocates are pleased.
Still, especially among environmentalists, the question persists: “Is a $600 million boost in highway spending too high a price to pay for a $100 million per year increase for transit?”
The transportation package being considered uses three principal sources of revenue: a 3-cent per gallon increase in the fuel tax, a three-quarter cent increase in the general sales tax, and increases in motor vehicle registration fees by one-third. The lion’s share of additional money for highways comes from the sales tax – a tax that most people concede is highly regressive. The modest 3-cent increase in the fuel tax just brings Missouri closer to the average of surrounding states.
Nobody is giving serious consideration to other forms of “user fees.” Higher taxes on trucks – such as a “weight-distance” tax that a few states use – and tolls are just two of the possible sources not being considered. The weight-distance tax would recover more of the cost of highway damage caused by heavy trucks. And tolls could be used to advantage to better distribute traffic across the state’s highways and roads. Putting a toll on I-70, for example, would shift as much as 30 percent of traffic to other highways, thereby reducing congestion and the perceived need to add lanes. Similarly, charging a very modest toll on urban freeways during morning and evening rush hours would shift some traffic to other routes or other times of day, or to other modes of travel such as transit or car-pooling. Again, the need to add very costly new freeway lanes would be eliminated or at least postponed.
If there’s anything good to be said about the transportation tax package, it is that it would raise only half of what MoDOT says the state needs. With that limitation, we should at least be spared some of the most obviously wasteful projects envisioned in the fifteen-year plan.
Back in February, Ken Midkiff and I met with a half dozen of the Governor’s people to offer our views on what should be included. We cited the need for increased investment in inter-city passenger transportation – not just more trains, but also connecting bus service. We cited the need for investment to make state roads within cities and towns safer for kids and seniors to bicycle or walk along and across. We cited the need for the state to encourage cities and towns to better plan their own growth and development so as to need less state and local investment in transportation and other infrastructure. We talked to them about world population growth, resource limitations, and the need to make our economy more resource efficient if we hope to remain economically competitive.
The Governor’s people seemed receptive to the perspectives we offered and the requests we made. So far, though, there’s little evidence that our words sank in. Realistically speaking, our opinions might not carry much weight between now and the General Assembly’s adjournment. Knowing that, we acknowledged back in February that some of the things we wanted might not be possible to include in legislation, and that they might be better addressed through executive orders and policy shifts and gubernatorial appointments.
That will be our trump card. With a $747 million package going to the voters late in 2002 – assuming it passes the Senate – we will be in a position to support or oppose the package, depending on what else happens between now and then.
First it’s up to the legislators. Then it’s up to the Governor.
Ron McLinden can be reached at ron.mclinden@sierraclub.org.