RAIDING THE TRANSPORTATION FUND

State Representative Roger Roth has committed an act of legislative sanity, uncovering another raid on our state transportation budget. Sure glad we pay more for vehicle registration and another gas tax increase is being considered:

This information was included in and based on Legislative Fiscal Bureau paper #753 and #754.

This is a case in which the Joint Committee on Finance started to move in the right direction then proceeded to take actions that made the Governor’s plans seem reasonable. The first actions that were taken were to prevent the Governor from using transportation segregated funds to support expenditures in the department of Public Instruction and in the Department of Natural Resources. Additionally, the committee voted to prevent a transfer of over $77 Million dollars to the general fund. Net gain to the transportation fund…$100 Million good.

Had they stopped at that point, this would have been quite the improvement to the budget. Of course they had to take steps to make things even worse. First they took almost $140 Million from the unappropriated balance in the transportation fund. Then they reduced funding for the state highway rehabilitation program by $69.8 Million and gave that away to the general fund. Net loss to the transportation fund….$200 Million bad! Twice as bad as the Governor’s plan!

That would have been bad enough however the JFC decided to replace with cash that was taken from the transportation fund (The Gas Tax) and used bonding to pay for the highway projects. It gets better, they had to include $4.8 Million just to start to pay the interest on these bonds. With this additional bonding, the debt service as a percentage of the gross transportation budget will reach 12.1% in 2010-11. What this means to the average tax payer is that less than $.88 out of every dollar you are forced to pay will actually be available to pay for transportation related work. The balance is what is needed to pay of the ’states’ credit card bill.