A timely reminder of what role the critics of the current tragedy may have played in its occurrence, through not spending tax money to keep existing transportation routes used by the mass of people (bridges and roads) in good repair prior to building new ones used by a tiny minority (bike trails and urban transit systems).
It is always tempting to buy new things and let the old ones stumble along as they are, but as our population continues to grow, the importance of maintaining infrastructure maintenance funding increases and the burden on public leadership to lead that effort also increases.
Of Bridges and Taxes
A study in the politics of transportation spending.
Saturday, August 18, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Some things in politics seem to be inevitable--and one of them is that any road or bridge tragedy will be followed by an argument to raise the gasoline tax. That's what is now happening in the wake of the terrible Minnesota bridge collapse, but that state's transportation and tax record shows precisely why voters are skeptical.
The gas tax pleas are coming from the usual suspects, in both Washington and St. Paul. James Oberstar, the Minnesota Democrat who runs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, recently stood beside the wreckage and recommended an increase in the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax, as a way to prevent future bridge collapses. His wing man, Alaska Republican and former Transportation Chairman Don Young, agrees wholeheartedly.
As it happens, these are the same men who played the lead role in the $286 billion 2005 federal highway bill. That's the bill that diverted billions of dollars of gas tax money away from urgent road and bridge projects toward Member earmarks for bike paths, nature trails and inefficient urban transit systems.
In Minnesota, meanwhile, politicians and editorial writers imply that the bridge collapse is somehow the fault of those like GOP Governor Tim Pawlenty who believe in the "motto" of no new taxes, as a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune put it. Mr. Pawlenty has been skewered for his veto earlier this year of a 7.5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax increase (from 20 cents a gallon currently). Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, has told her Gopher State constituents that if President Bush weren't keeping us in Iraq, bridges wouldn't be falling down.
Mr. Pawlenty has been wavering, first saying after the collapse that he was open to a tax increase but more recently showing more reluctance. Democrats in the Legislature are also demanding a sales tax hike to raise another $1.5 billion. What's never explained is why the gas-tax revenue they already raise is so poorly spent.
Minnesota's transportation auditors warned as long ago as 1990 that there was a "backlog of bridges that are classified as having structural deficiencies." In 1999 engineers declared that cracks found in the bridge that collapsed were "a major concern." Bike paths were deemed a higher priority by Congress, however, including its powerful Minnesota Representatives.
