Round and round the transportation debate goes. Where it will end up, nobody knows.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine advanced a novel argument in favor of his $1 billion-a-year package of tax increases at a transportation conference in Goochland County yesterday. Increases in statewide revenue sources are needed, he argued, to address the intensifying inadequacy of gasoline tax revenues, which are being increasingly consumed by maintenance and repairs. He rejected Republican proposals to revivify regional transportation authorities and taxes, contending, as the Times-Dispatch writes, that statewide lawmakers can’t “put it on the shoulders of the poor schlubs in local government to pass taxes” that the General Assembly should have the political courage to enact itself.
That’s an interesting turn-around for a governor who campaigned — and governed, initially — on the premise that transportation and land use decisions needed to be made in concert. The Republican proposals for creating regional transportation authorities are loaded with flaws. But they do have one advantage: They put transportation decision-making closer to the level of government where land use decisions are made. Gov. Kaine appears to find it preferable for state lawmakers, who are distant from land use decisions, to show courage, over municipal leaders, who make the land use decisions that directly affect the need for transportation improvements, doing so. Hmmm…
Meanwhile, Republicans are fumbling toward a response to Kaine’s challenge that they need to be “problem solvers” rather than “problem avoiders.” Later yesterday, in the General Assembly building, leaders of the Elephant Clan spotlighted public-private arrangements during a hearing heavily attended by lobbyists for transportation and construction firms as well as industries affected by Kaine’s proposed taxes, including automobile dealers.
A fix for transportation should include a bigger role for private business, the R’s argued, including multibillion-dollar lease-and-maintenance deals for highways, bridges and tunnels. States such as Indiana, Texas and Pennsylvania have enacted or are considering such plans, noted Jim Noland and Jeff Schapiro with the T-D.
Here’s what the Republicans haven’t thought through: Privatization can be a useful tool in particular situations, but it’s not a cure-all. As applied in Pennsylvania (See “Pennsylvania Goes Over to the Dark Side in Transportation Deal,”) privatization can become a tool for engineering massive transfers of wealth, not for nudging the system towards “user pays” financing.
Privatizing (or long-term leasing) roads makes sense when it enables a financially strapped state to make needed transportation improvements that would not get made otherwise. Building HOT lanes on Interstate 495 is a good example. However, privatizing roads is a tragedy in the case of Pennsylvania, where it looks like a mechanism for the inter-regional transfer of money from drivers on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to transportation projects across the state.
Taxpayers are rightfully distrustful of both Kaine and the Republicans at this stage of the debate. With neither set of proposals would taxpayers be protected from politicians dispensing with the largesst to the benefit of favored special interests. At least with Kaine’s schema, the Transportation Trust Fund has a formula that allocates revenues between regions with a modicum of fairness. There are no such assurances if the General Assembly succeeded in privatizing major highways a la Pennsylvania Turnpike. The money would end up wherever the most powerful members of the General Assembly agreed to spend it.
On the other hand, Kaine has pretty well painted himself into a corner. He cannot easily change his position. The Republicans, by contrast, have an opportunity to clarify their ideas — indicating specific highway assets they would propose privatizing and spelling out exactly how they would spend the money. If they are guided by user-pays principles, voters will see the fairness in what they propose. If they simply devise schemes for enriching investment bankers and institutional investors, they will end up hanging themselves.
