Guest Editorial
Desperate people are often conditioned to have low expectations, which is perhaps why the House Republicans’ new plan for state roads received such a warm reception in Lansing last week. Voters may be placated for a while, too, but it won’t last.
The nearly $500 million infusion of annual spending in the plan that Speaker Jase Bolger announced might sound significant, but it’s not close to what’s necessary to fix state’s roads. He anticipated as much in announcing the proposal.
“There will be plenty who say it’s not enough,” Bolger said, “to which I will say, ‘20 years of all-or-nothing has gotten pretty much nothing.’”
The GOP majority deserves credit for putting something on the table, but the better-than-nothing argument shouldn’t appease anybody. Michigan roads are worse than bad; they’re atrocious, dangerous and costly to state motorists, and they’ll continue to worsen if this is the best our Legislature can do.
The brutal winter just ended was indeed exceptional, but the freeze-thaw cycles that wreak havoc with Michigan’s roads is anything but. Bone-jarring potholes are an annual rite as predictable as the return of the sandhill cranes to the Lower Peninsula.
There’s a reason, however, that this spring is worse than any in memory, and it has less to do with the weather than with decades of neglect.
Recall that census data released last year revealed that no state spends less on roads per capita than Michigan: just $154 per person annually on its infrastructure in fiscal year 2009-2010, far less than even neighboring states with similarly difficult winters.
The transportation fund is at its lowest funding level in decades, having fallen to a level first reached in 1967 and last seen in the early 1980s.
Increasing funding by $1.2 million, as Snyder had asked, would simply end the skid. The Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association estimates we need to allocate an additional $2 billion a year to address the issue, about four times what’s in the GOP proposal.
Recent polling shows voters understand the need to invest in their roads and are willing to pay the price, preferring, for example, to use a $1 billion surplus on roads rather than receiving a modest tax cut. Even if they weren’t, this isn’t a problem without making some tough decisions.
If we want better roads, we’ll need to pay for them.
The lion’s share of the money in the GOP plan would come from taxes that are already in place, meaning that some as-yet-unnamed line item is going to take a hit.
Bolger would also replace the current per-gallon taxes on gasoline and diesel with a 6 percent wholesale tax on both. He says the change would be “revenue-neutral” for gas but would raise about $50 million dollars from diesel sales. The plan includes higher fees for overweight vehicles, a sensible proposal given the impact such vehicles have on roads.
But these are modest responses to a major problem. Our Legislature’s aversion to raising additional revenue is simply shifting costs in ways that are unfair to motorists and damaging to our state economy.
The Anderson Economic Group published a study that estimates that in 2007, about $542 million in car repairs and $383 million in medical costs were attributable to crashes caused by poor road infrastructure in Michigan. Further, deteriorating roads cost jobs in the form of unrealized economic development and opportunity.
Gov. Rick Snyder, some industry groups and even some Democrats called the GOP plan a good beginning, but that’s only true if it prompts a serious inquiry into real solutions.
Our suspicion is that this plan is crafted to avoid such an inquiry. Election year or not, such a detour would be unacceptable.
— LIVINGSTON DAILY PRESS & ARGUS