Connecticut’s roads and bridges are in rough shape and getting worse. What’s the solution? Gov. Dannel P. Malloy last week offered the usual Democratic prescription: more taxes and more fees.
Two years ago, legislative Republicans offered an alternative, “Prioritize Progress.” It would bolster existing transportation revenues, such as gasoline taxes, with general-obligation bonds – without increasing taxes or imposing tolls. The GOP also would strengthen state management and oversight of highway projects.
In the short term, the Republican plan would work best because it would energize road repairs and rebuilding without placing new burdens on Connecticut taxpayers. But the plan’s reliance on bonding renders it unacceptable in the long run. Excessive bonding, often for pork and fluff, is among the factors contributing to the state’s current fiscal straits. Connecticut’s bonded indebtedness is about $22 billion, almost double the amount in 2002, according to a Yankee Institute study. Taxpayers shell out $2.2 billion every year – 12 percent of the annual state budget – just to pay for past expenditures of borrowed money.
Gov. Malloy’s plan is worse. It relies on an immediate burst of revenue from a 7-cent increase in gasoline taxes, plus a $3 fee for tire purchases. The governor apparently has forgotten that when you tax something, you get less of it – in this case, fewer and smaller purchases of gasoline by Connecticut residents and those passing through. Truck drivers, vacationing families and business people can, and will, avoid buying fuel in Connecticut if they can save money by purchasing it somewhere else.
The toll plan makes more sense now than it did a few years ago, thanks to technology that eliminates the hazards posed by fixed toll booths. But the most logical and cost-effective means of passing the plate to nonresidents – collecting tolls at the borders – may not be practical. “In 1983, Connecticut entered an agreement with the federal government by which it receives $3 for every dollar it spends on its highways, provided that no tolls are instituted at the state’s borders,” the Fairfield County Business Journal reported last month. Tolling stations placed within the state to reduce congestion would be allowed, but they would end up hitting Connecticut residents much harder than border tolls would.
It would have been best if Gov. Malloy, and many of Connecticut’s Democratic lawmakers, hadn’t spent the past year bashing President Trump. Would anyone care to guess how Mr. Trump and his appointees would respond to a request by Connecticut for a waiver allowing border tolls, with no penalty?
Connecticut could reduce its per-project costs simply by overturning the long-standing prevailing-wage mandate, which requires contractors to pay union scale and abide by union rules on the job. Sparing them these obligations would result in more competitive bidding and lower costs. As Connecticut has learned on a number of occasions, these requirements do not necessarily result in high-quality work. Proper oversight – as called for in the Republicans’ Prioritize Progress plan – would do more to ensure quality work, completed on time.
Toll revenues won’t start rolling in for several years at best, and Connecticut lawmakers almost certainly wouldn’t approve a steep increase in gasoline taxes just ahead of the 2018 state elections. Yet the problems articulated by Gov. Malloy and others are every bit as pressing as he says they are. If he warms to the GOP plan, at least in the short term, Connecticut may be able to solve the worst of its transportation problems.
