Gretchen Whitmer was elected governor last year partly on the strength of her slogan, “fix the damn roads.” It wasn’t original; Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville told me years ago that’s all he was hearing from his constituents, but it was a great slogan all the same.
Except there is still no clear sign that the governor and legislature can agree how to fix them. Thanks to the dead hand of gerrymandering, Republicans still have solid, though reduced majorities, in both the state house and senate, and there are still some GOP lawmakers who have vowed to oppose any tax increases, for any reason, no matter what.
But make no mistake about it — we need to pay more taxes to fix the roads, no matter what. For years, Michigan, the state that put the world on wheels, has spent less on its roads per mile than any other state in the union –and the devastation shows.
Estimates are that it would take at least $2.6 billion more a year for a decade to restore the state’s roads to anything like acceptable condition. Paul Ajegha, her newly appointed director of the Michigan Department of Transportation, said candidly last month that MDOT doesn’t always fix roads to last because they don’t have enough money to do the job right.
During her campaign, Whitmer talked about raising $2 billion in new road funding a year, with the hope that will generate an extra $1 billion from federal funds. But, like virtually all politicians, she did backflips to avoid calling for new taxes. Instead, she talked about floating bonds, or some system of “user fees.”
Economists generally feel that bonds are perhaps the worst way to finance road repair, because citizens would be saddled with paying the money back, plus interest, for many years to come. New Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield, a 30-year-old Republican from the tiny hamlet of Levering, agrees that voters expect the roads to be fixed.
But he wants to start by making sure all the funds generated by taxes levied on gasoline at the pump actually go to the roads. The sales tax portion of it now mostly goes to schools. Changing that – taking the sales tax off gasoline – would require a statewide vote.
And that would leave schools without a significant chunk of revenue. Chatfield has said the schools should not be shortchanged, but hasn’t made it clear how he would do that. There’s another looming problem too: Legislators last year passed a $1.2 billion road fix plan that will, starting in 2021, take $600 million of it from the already-cash strapped general fund.
That means much less money for somebody, probably schools or higher education.
In my view, the easiest and probably most sensible way to fix the roads would be to increase the taxes at the pump. That, plus a hike in registration fees, was what Governor Rick Snyder originally proposed, which unfortunately went nowhere.
Now, a group headed by two well-respected retired legislators, former GOP Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema and Democrat Senate Minority Leader Bob Emerson, is suggesting boosting the gas and diesel tax by a nickel a year over the next nine years.
That makes a lot of sense, and would be barely noticed because of the constant fluctuations in fuel prices; it might even make more sense to do a dime a year for five years.
By the way, that would cost us a lot less than the wear and tear caused by these bad roads cost everyone who owns a car.
There is no such thing as a free lunch – and we need leaders with the courage to say so.
