Public works project or congestion relief package?

By Lynn Harsh, Evergreen Freedom Foundation

I’m trying to figure out whether Governor Locke’s recently released transportation proposal is a public works project, a congestion relief package, or neither. It will cost at least $8.5 billion new dollars, whatever it is.

And just where will that money come from? For starters, a nine-cent gas tax would be added to the more than 41 cents in federal and state taxes we already pay at the pump. Vehicle sales taxes would increase by 1.5 percent and truckers’ fees would be hiked.

Leaders in the big business community support the governor’s proposal. They are losing money trying to move people and products to market on our overburdened transportation system. Most of them know our Department of Transportation (DOT) is an expensive, inefficient behemoth, but they are tired of waiting for the legislature to clean it up. So they will choose tax increases hoping something will finally happen to help their bottom line.

The governor, on the other hand, said immediate passage of his transportation package was imperative because it would create 20,000 jobs. He said voters would support the tax increases because of our severe economic downturn. But maybe the governor forgot that these are the same people personally experiencing the downturn.

Furthermore, are these 20,000 new jobs, and if so, will the governor guarantee that only currently unemployed road workers will be hired? Will the contracts be written to freeze everyone out of the 20,000 jobs unless they are a union worker? This is what usually happens. More importantly, is providing these 20,000 jobs a core function of government?

Money paid to employees who are hired to fulfill state contracts comes from taxpayers. This includes businesses. These are the very people struggling to make ends meet – struggling to cover payroll. So, under Locke’s plan, government will take money from the pockets of one person or business to redistribute it to another. This flies in the face of our free-market system–a system that left mostly unfettered can turn our current recession into prosperity again.

Instead of artificially creating 20,000 taxpayer-subsidized jobs, public officials can cauterize the economic bleeding if they stop driving businesses out of our state. Lawmakers have regulated and taxed businesses to the point where their economic equilibrium cannot be maintained, and they are leaving our state in large numbers. Transportation gridlock adds salt to the wound.

We can solve this problem. Lawmakers must insist that DOT’s immediate task is to address traffic congestion, not build an expensive pie-in-the-sky light rail system that only a handful of people can use. DOT wants us out of our cars, so their mantra has been, "If we build new roads, people will just use them." The DOT should treat us like adults who can manage our own workplace and social needs. When affordable, workable alternatives are created, many of us will get out of our cars. Until then, DOT should back off and build roads.

We should consider what the state of Maryland does: Its DOT is self-supporting. Money collected under their transportation umbrella is spent on transportation projects. In this state, none of the $1.2 billion collected in taxes on automotive items each biennia goes toward transportation improvements. Only half of the current 23-cent per gallon state gas tax finds its way to the Department of Transportation.

Of the 41 cents total we pay per gallon in taxes, 18.4 percent goes to the federal government. But the feds say they only need three or so of those cents to accomplish their obligations toward us. Let’s ask for the rest back, then the governor wouldn’t even need to contemplate raising taxes.

Furthermore, what sensible person believes that any department can run efficiently and economically with 468 entities making transportation decisions and drinking at the transportation trough? That’s what we face in this state. We also face a ferry system that keeps failing its financial audits. Seems for the past decade or so that it can’t find all the money it collects from us.

In the meantime, a normally sensible CEO told me I need to be open-minded about the governor’s proposal. That might make sense in some circumstances, but in this case, it requires my mind be open at both ends. No sale.

Lynn Harsh is Executive Director of the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation. She can be reached at (360) 956-3482 or lharsh@effwa.org.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org