ACP Pubs

Funding Feuds
April 16, 2008

Haggling over funding for highways continues, at both the state and federal levels. In Colorado, Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany’s bill, SD-213, to allow the state to charge tolls of up to $5 on the portion of Interstate 70 between Floyd Hill and the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnels west of Denver took another step forward with its approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 7-3 vote. It now goes to the full Senate for consideration, and if approved there, to the House. There’s still a lengthy road ahead for a comparatively minor funding measure that would affect only one small (though highly important) segment of Colorado’s highway system.

In Arizona, meanwhile, two bills that would allow the Arizona Department of Transportation and other public agencies to work with private companies to finance, build and maintain pay-as-you-go (i.e., toll) roads won tentative approval from the full Senate in March. Then, after an April Fools’ Day radio broadcast informed residents of the state that their freeways had been converted into toll roads and the outcry was instantaneous, the bills have advanced no further in the legislature.

But Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano and a coalition of business groups that includes the state highway/heavy chapter of Associated General Contractors are finalizing plans for a 30-year, $42-billion transportation plan to be presented to voters on this November’s election – if enough signatures are obtained to get it on the ballot. To satisfy everyone, the measure includes a mix of highway and rail transit projects. Funding possibilities include impact fees assessed on new homes and a 1-cent sales tax increase. Key projects that would be funded include the obvious – expansion of interstates 8, 10, 17 and 40 – as well as the controversial – commuter rail from northern Arizona south through Phoenix and Tucson, a rail or expanded bus rapid transit system in Tucson – and expansion of the fledgling Phoenix area light rail system. The sponsoring coalition, known as TIME (Transportation & Infrastructure Moving Arizona’s Economy) must obtain 153,365 valid signatures to place the measure on this year’s ballot.

About the time the funding initiative measure was being announced, the Arizona Department of Transportation announced that its feasibility study of an I-10 bypass around Phoenix and Tucson indicated the 250-mile project, though quite costly, was indeed technically feasible and appears to be necessary. So there’s another major unfunded project added to the mix.

Last, and perhaps most surprising, is the April 15 suggestion by Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain that the federal motor fuels tax (“gas tax”) be suspended between Memorial Day and Labor Day to provide an “immediate economic stimulus.” In reality, the effect would be quite the opposite, and the American Road & Transportation Builders Association has compiled figures showing what such a short-sighted move would cost the states in federal highway funding and lost jobs. The 2008 funding loss and extrapolated job loss (over a 3-4-year period) for the Mountain states is: Arizona, $141.6 million, 4,923 jobs; Colorado, $96.4 million, 3,351 jobs; Nevada, $51.6 million, 1,794 jobs; New Mexico, $66.4 million, 2,309 jobs; Utah, $51.4 million, 1,787 jobs; and Wyoming, $46.2 million and 1,608 jobs. Hardly an economic stimulus, and really quite shocking when proposed by the candidate most in the construction industry are likely to vote for!

Posted by Hol Wagner on April 16, 2008 | Comments (0)