The Mississippi Economic Council has put down on paper what many transportation leaders and others have been saying for years.
The state’s roads and bridges are in terrible shape, the situation is nearing a crisis point, and there are easy and reasonable ways to address it — if we can only get those running state government to summon the political courage to do the necessary and obvious.
The MEC’s 42-page report should provide the cover the Legislature and Gov. Phil Bryant need to do what they should have done long before now: Raise the revenue — through tax or fee increases or a mixture of both — to get this problem addressed before it gets any worse or more expensive.
MEC, the state’s chamber of commerce, crunched a lot of numbers, and it estimates that it would take an extra $375 million per year to tackle the worst infrastructure problems. It believes that’s a number the politicians and the public can be persuaded to swallow.
The MEC doesn’t specify where lawmakers should go to get the money, but it provides a menu of options where taxes or fees could be raised: the excise tax on fuel, the general sales tax, the excise tax on rental cars, the fee on license plates. It also suggests as possibilities a new sales tax just on fuel or a new vehicle-miles-traveled fee, the latter of which is being experimented with in some states.
The most obvious source of new money — and one that this newspaper has advocated for some time — is the excise tax on gasoline and diesel fuel.
According to the MEC task force’s calculations, every 1 cent increase in the gas tax would bring in $21.7 million. The gas tax is presently 18.4 cents per gallon and has not been increased since 1987. If the excise tax had been adjusted for inflation, the tax should be 20 cents higher by now. Twenty cents times $21.7 million equals $434 million — more than MEC’s recommended spending increase, and enough cushion to cover any continued downward trend in gasoline consumption.
The beauty of raising the gas tax is that it’s a simple and logical user fee, and the timing could not be better. With gas prices presently less than $2 a gallon — half of their peak seven years ago — lawmakers could pass a 20-cent increase tomorrow and motorists would hardly flinch.
It’s only because Republicans, who dominate all of state government, have created such an anti-tax phobia that even completely logical revenue measures have been considered unthinkable.
The initial reaction from Bryant and other key GOP leaders to the MEC report was that if any taxes are to be raised to fund transportation maintenance and repair, they would want to see other taxes lowered. That may be the way political trade-offs work, but it’s a fiscally poor argument.
The longstanding neglect of Mississippi’s roads and bridges is already costing drivers money in higher wear and tear on their vehicles, longer commute times and higher accident rates. According to the MEC report, if the work it recommends is done, Mississippi motorists on average will save $534 a year, four times as much as they will be paying in higher taxes or fees.
In other words, what the state has been doing is penny-wise and pound-foolish — not to mention dangerous — for the people of this state. No taxes have to be cut to make them whole. They will already be better off financially if deteriorating roads and bridges are fixed or replaced.
The public can understand this if it is just discussed intelligently. The MEC has laid the groundwork for this education process to take hold — if the GOP leadership has the backbone to see it through.
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