A new 10-year, $8.2 billion highway program sits waiting for lawmakers to reconvene in Topeka Wednesday to wind up the 2010 session. A bill spelling out how the program would be paid for was approved by the Senate Highway Committee last month, just before the Legislature adjourned for its spring break.
It calls for a .3 percent increase in the state sales tax and increases in registration fees. Passenger car fees would rise $20 a year; 18-wheelers, $100. No increase in fuels taxes is in the bill — but should be.
A new program is needed because the 1999 Comprehensive Transportation Program expired last year.
There is no money left to pay for big projects. As envisioned in the Senate bill, the new program would fund $1.8 billion for major projects; far less than half of the $5 billion the Kansas Department of Transportation believes is needed to meet the state’s current and future needs.
Senate Transportation Committee Chairman, Dwayne Umbarger, told a Kansas City Star reporter he was optimistic about the plan’s chances. Sen. Umbarger cited Gov. Mark Parkinson’s call for a one-cent sales tax increase to deal with the state’s budget deficit, support from Senate GOP leaders for a tax increase and broad agreement that some of any tax hike should go for transportation needs.
House Republican leaders, in contrast, were negative. Rep. Kevin Yoder, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said support for highways was there but he didn’t think this was a good time to consider a new 10-year program.
House Speaker Mike O’Neal was more emphatic. “I just don’t think the timing is right,” he said, adding that if the Legislature did raise taxes, the money should go to social services and education.
Highway supporters are touring the state, trying to drum up support for continued KDOT funding.
A NEW 10-year program is needed. It should be supported with another dime on gasoline and diesel taxes as well as a share of a sales tax increase large enough to keep funding for social services and education level; not increased, just level. And that means level after the KDOT share is subtracted.
A $8.2 billion program sounds extravagant. It isn’t. Highways are expensive. What the Senate committee proposes amounts to $820 million a year for new projects. Just one of the projects needed in Johnson County is the reconstruction of the interchange at K-10 and I-435 at Lenexa-Olathe would cost $600 million — nearly 75 percent of a year’s new money under the proposed program. That would leave $220 million in that year for the rest of Kansas.
Speaker O’Neal and others in the Legislature warn that any tax in-crease would slow the economy and make economic recovery more difficult. As has been said before, this is not necessarily so. Federal taxes were increased substantially just after President Bill Clinton was elected and a recession was in progress. A record decade of economic growth followed, producing the first federal surplus in many years. A tax in-crease in slow times does not necessarily make things worse.
More to the point, money collected in Kansas through taxes and then spent in Kansas on highways, education and public services is just as likely to boost the economy as it is to slow it down. Highway construction projects give employment to workers who might otherwise be un-employed. Their wages are spent in Kansas. Much of the materials used in highway construction are purchased in Kansas. Many of the construction companies that do the work are located in Kansas. When they flourish, Kansas becomes stronger. Iola’s SE-KAN Asphalt comes to mind.
That’s the positive side of the case. The negative is that failure to adequately fund the Kansas Department of Transportation will hurt our economy because highway improvements that could enhance economic development will not be built and because major maintenance projects will be postponed — and become more expensive to accomplish in the fu-ture.
There are sound reasons to say yes to the Senate committee’s plan and to make it even stronger. Saying no would be penny-wise, pound-foolish.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
