Wisconsin lawmakers sink their teeth this week into some of the more divisive portions of Gov. Scott Walker’s biennial budget. One is how to pay for transportation.
Walker doesn’t want to raise taxes to pay for the state’s transportation needs. So one tool he uses is bonding. His transportation secretary Mark Gottlieb had recommended a hike in the gas tax. But Gottlieb found himself pitching Walker’s plan to the Legislature’s joint finance committee.
“Most large highway and bridge projects, which are currently under construction, will stay on their current schedules for completion, including the Zoo Interchange. Proposed funding of $623 million over the biennium will keep this important project to modernize the state’s busiest freeway interchange on track for completion in 2018,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb warned lawmakers about altering the governor’s plan.
“The overall condition of our highway system will continue to deteriorate marginally at the funding levels in the governor’s budget. Reducing the governor’s recommendations will further accelerate that deterioration and lead to even greater costs in the future,” Gottlieb said.
Steve Hiniker wishes state leaders would be more concerned about the condition of local roads. Hiniker is with the group 1000 Friends of Wisconsin. It was among several that advocated Tuesday for lawmakers to scale back highway spending and shift the freed-up funding to communities.
“We have actually no districts of the state where all of the roads are in good condition. We actually have more than one-third of the local roads in the state are in substandard condition and we think that this is absurd,” Hiniker said.
Besides, Hiniker says, the volume of traffic on highways is dropping. So his group and others are also calling for Wisconsin to spend more on mass transit. Stephanie Gyldenvand is with the coalition of faith leaders, WISDOM. She says an aging population needs mass transit. According to Gyldenvand, women live 10 years past the time that it’s safe for them to drive a car. “Men live seven years past their ability to drive, and we have nowhere near the transportation system that is going to connect people to appointments, keep them connected to families,” Gyldenvand said.
One lawmaker on joint finance says the groups propose interesting ideas. Yet Democrat Gordon Hintz doesn’t know if the ideas will interest the Republican majority. But there’s one thing he believes the parties will agree to talk about when they debate the transportation budget: the amount of bonding Gov. Walker recommends.
“Republicans and Democrats alike, I think, are opposed to borrowing the easy way out to help pay for mostly road infrastructure, especially at that level. At the $1.3 billion in new bonding, going forward about 25 cents of every dollar spent on transportation would be spent on debt service,” Hintz said.
Republican Luther Olsen also serves on the joint finance committee. He, too, cautions against relying too much on borrowing as a means to balance the budget.
“We are getting ourselves in a corner where we won’t be able to afford anything because we’re paying for projects that are already done. And just putting it on the next generation and when they gotta fix their roads, there’ll be no revenue to fix them with unless they raise revenue,” Olsen said.
The GOP co-chair of joint finance recently asked the transportation secretary to make a list of the road projects the state would have to delay if lawmakers scale back borrowing.
