Tolling, The Grand Strategy | Eastern North Carolina Now

    I wrote an article about ferry tolling last week. That article talked about current events. The issue of a major policy change in funding transportation has been around since at least 2007. The issue is a lot bigger than ferry tolling. On December 10, 2008 the "21st Century Transportation Committee" presented its final report to the then Democrat House, Senate and Governor. This committee, consisting of 24 members, was commissioned by Marc Basnight, President Pro Tempore of the Senate and Joe Hackney, Speaker of the House on October 29 of 2007. Each of these Democrats appointed eight members and Governor Michael Easley appointed eight members.

    I have a purpose in pointing out this committee was invented by Democrats. There seems to be a political disease in which one party comes up with a bad idea, shortly thereafter looses political control, and the other party decides those who were just thrown out of office had a really great idea and they must take it over and call it their very own. Could this bad idea have been one of the reasons the last party got thrown out of office? I call this the dim witted and intellectually barren syndrome. Along comes the Republicans in 2012 and they stole this bad idea from the Democrats.
Hood Richardson speaking to constituents: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    Our Mideast RPO looked at this Democrat report on 21st Century Transportation Funding when it came out and turned a thumbs down. We even voted by resolution not to support the report. We had a lot of Democrats on the RPO at that time and the report was still dead on arrival. The two main reasons were the report: (1) advocated for a change in the "Equity Formula" to divert funds to the Piedmont and metropolitan counties, and (2) advocated for tolls and new taxes for transportation.

    Governor Easley and even the Republicans in the Legislature did not waste any time in passing legislation to fully implement the report of the 21st Century Transportation Committee. Governor Perdue and the Republican Legislature carried out the work started by Easley. In addition, they passed laws allowing counties to independently raise money and construct roads. Cities already had the right to obtain loans and build roads. But, cities get a part of the gas tax because of a legislative act called the Powell Bill. Counties do not receive any transportation funding. Now counties can build their own roads and possibly ferries and even railroads. Counties can now issue bonds to help fund municipal construction. Just think about all those commissioners building and maintaining roads for their buddies.

    Back to the master plan report, also known as The 21st Century Transportation Report, under which the Republican legislature and governor are operating. The entire plan presented to the Governor and the Legislature is only 12 pages long. The recommendations are only one and one half pages. The recommendations sound like motherhood and apple pie. Who could not agree with these recommendations? But, the devil is in the details, which are five pages of policy options.

    The recommendations talk about future needs, a growing state, and a "fix it first policy." Fix it first means we maintain what we have and make improvements for safety and efficient traffic flow before spending money on new projects or major rebuilds of existing roads. There is nothing new about "Fix it First." We have been doing that since the 1930's. They talk about the equity formula, saying some advocate change but then quickly point out that not all money is distributed thru the equity formula. Kind of sounds like nothing is going to happen at this point. They say we can satisfy our mobility needs by spending an additional one billion dollars per year during the next 10 years. Then the gears shift very quickly. They recommend that the Legislature look at their "menu of policy options" to raise the needed funds. If one only reads the recommendations and not the "menu of policy options" one is definitely in the dark. Could it be that our North Carolina Senators and House members do the same thing the Washington, D. C. boys do? They just vote it, they do not read it.

    The devilish details are in the menu of options. They recommend the highway use tax be increased. This is the annual license tag renewal fee for all vehicles other than passenger vehicles. These are the people who are already paying hundreds and thousands of dollars, depending on the vehicle size and weight, to use our highways. Next they invent a "vehicle miles traveled fee." We would get an annual bill for the miles our vehicle traveled during the past year. The state would obtain this information during our annual safety check. Then they recommend the state increase the annual license plate fee we pay for vehicle passenger cars. They recommended we immediately issue bonds for road building. They want another "local option" sales tax to be used for transportation. They want all fees to be indexed to the inflation rate. They recommend tolls on most interstates and at other selected locations. They want to increase the tax on either diesel or gasoline.

    The only really good idea was for the Legislature to stop diverting about two hundred million in fuel taxes into the general fund. The Legislature sold higher fuel taxes on the idea that all of the fuel taxes would be used for roads. Then they steal part of the money for use in the general fund every year.

    It is of monumental importance to note the Committee did not recommend increasing the fuel tax other than to differentiate between diesel and gasoline. There is an argument to not have the same tax on diesel and gasoline because there is more energy in a gallon of diesel than a gallon of gasoline, and therefore, diesel passenger vehicles travel more miles on a gallon than a gasoline powered vehicle. They could have recommended we sell the state railroads to private industry and use the money to build roads.

    Both the Republican and Democrat Legislatures have bit hook line and sinker. They swung into action and passed enabling legislation for almost all of the recommendations in the report. They laid the ground work for a major shift in financing policy for transportation. As a tax payer, I view this as simply more hidden ways to tax the public. The Legislators probably viewed this as a great idea to get more taxes without having to raise the gas tax. What they gave us is "tax death by one thousand cuts." We will be nickeled and dimed to death. This system of many taxes works fine for politicians because the public cannot easily see how high transportation costs really are.

    Let us go back to the gas tax. We all rail against it. The good thing about it is we can easily see and understand the cost. It is only one number expressed in cents per gallon. There are no other hidden taxes in that number. We can easily lobby our elected representatives when they want to raise it. Some of us may even be willing to admit that a higher tax, on occasion, may be justified. The gas tax is a use tax. It is fair to everyone. A multitude of other taxes, all aimed to provide for transportation, can easily be jockeyed about in small increments without the public becoming irate enough to throw their representatives out of office. This deception would work like this: We raise the tag tax this year, the odometer (mileage) tax next year, the tolls the following year, etc., etc. We will increase the cost of transportation by creating a lot of new jobs so we can enforce the collection of these new taxes.

    The best way to fund roads is with the gas tax. We do not need to create new departments and jobs simply to fund transportation. The gas tax system has worked well for at least 50 years. It is disappointing to see the Republicans embrace a really bad idea started by the Democrats.