Mississippi voters need to get up to speed on the debate about highway funding. There’s a lot of money on the line.
How much money? TRIP, a national transportation research group, just completed a study claiming deficient roads are costing Mississippians $2.9 billion a year in vehicle repairs, traffic delays and crashes. That’s about $1,500 per vehicle.
Meanwhile, the Legislature won’t raise the gas tax 15 cents a gallon to increase road funding, an increase that would cost drivers about $100 per vehicle. The tax has never been adjusted for inflation in 25 years.
The Mississippi Economic Council (MEC) is mounting a huge public relations effort to raise the gas tax but it has so far fallen on deaf ears at the Legislature.
So what gives? Why would our leaders not spend $100 to save $1,500? It’s like refusing to spend money on an oil change that would save your entire engine from destruction.
Like an oil change, we can defer maintenance on our roads for many years until the results come home to roost. This creates a difficult political challenge. Our leaders must do something unpopular now to avoid greater cost down the road. Leadership is required – something in scarce supply in this age of Tea Party revolt, especially in an anti-tax Republican state like Mississippi.
Living in Jackson, I have seen first-hand what happens when road maintenance is deferred. I have spent thousands on tires, rims and alignment jobs.
Even worse, it costs far more to rebuild a road than to repave it. By the time the problem becomes obvious, it’s too late. Instead of a simple mill and overlay, the entire road must be rebuilt at four times the cost.
The political will is harder to muster given the changing landscape of campaign contributions. As money and power have become centralized in large national political action committees, state organizations like the MEC are outspent by national anti-tax foundations.
One such organization is Americans For Prosperity (AFP), funded significantly by the Koch brothers, two of the country’s wealthiest billionaires.
AFP is not a bad organization at all. They are dedicated to controlling runaway government spending. But like any ideology, strict adherence to principles can lead to a lack of pragmatism.
The MEC spent $300,000 on their state road study. Meanwhile, AFP-Mississippi has spent millions opposing the gas tax increase. Much of this money has gone directly to our political leaders, clouding their objectivity on the issue. For instance, AFP-Mississippi just spent five figures on a direct mail flier praising Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves’ opposition to the gas tax.
It takes money to win elections. AFP and other conservative national political action committees have the big bucks to make it so.
Money aside, the AFP makes some good points. Their main point is that even though the gas tax has not been increased in 25 years, the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) budget has increased quite nicely over the years from federal funds and other state sources.
AFP makes another good point: The worst roads are the city and county roads, not the state roads. Raising the gas tax wouldn’t fix the real problem unless MDOT starts sharing its money with local governments.
Indeed, MDOT has only given 10 to 15 percent of its budget to city and counties in the form of state aid. If the gas tax is increased, MDOT is promising to increase this to 20 percent. But that still seems low. If the gas tax is increased, the Legislature should insist that half the increase go to fix our deteriorating local roads.
I do fault AFP in their claim that only one percent of our roads are in bad shape. It seems to me they cherry-picked the stats to come up with that claim. Both state and federal data indicate that about a third of our roads are in poor or very poor shape. Unfortunately, a huge number of smaller local roads are not included in these surveys. If they were, the number of bad roads would probably be close to 50 percent.
No doubt, there is waste at MDOT. There is waste everywhere. But if we delay maintaining our roads until we solve the problem of bureaucratic waste, we will eventually all be driving off-road vehicles on dirt roads.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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