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Maine’s system for paying for the maintenance and construction of roads and bridges needs to be revised. However, changing the funding in the waning days of the Legislature, without adequate input and consideration of alternatives, is not the way to make such changes.
Lawmakers have tried for years to update the state’s transportation funding mechanism, which is heavily reliant on borrowing. They have mostly failed at significant reform, instead of allocating more money from the state’s general fund to transportation projects. Changes, such as more reliance on fuel taxes and charges for owners of electric vehicles, have been bypassed.
It doesn’t help that a legislative commission, charged with updating the transportation funding formula, didn’t really finish its work, instead leaving lawmakers with a list of possibilities but no actual recommendations.
So, we get lawmakers’ frustration that more general fund money that could be used for other priorities was allocated to transportation. However, that was a bipartisan d ecision made by lawmakers and supported by Gov. Janet Mills last year — again at the end of a session without adequate public discussion. Compounding what we view as last year’s rushed move with another last-minute, poorly vetted change is not an improvement.
Late last week, Democrats on the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee passed a spending plan that stripped about $60 million per year from the transportation budget. By Monday, this move was already unraveling after the governor, transportation commissioner and others warned that the new budget plan would shortchange planned road and bridge projects.
Transportation Commissioner Bruce Van Note told lawmakers that the Democrats’ new spending plan would likely reduce the number of projects that his department could fund. On Monday, he noted that every state dollar in the system is matched by $3 in federal funds, meaning potentially severe effects and a need for borrowing at a time of record revenue.
“So unpredictability just went up,” he told the Bangor Daily News in an interview.
Maine transportation funding comes from a mix of sources: the state’s highway fund, the federal government and bonding. The highway fund gets most of its revenue from the state’s fuel taxes, along with vehicle registrations and other vehicle-related fees, thus tying funding to those who most use the state’s roads and bridges.
The highway fund has long fallen far short of having enough money to pay for needed transportation projects. As a result, voters have, for years, approved bond issues, typically about $100 million, to pay for transportation work. Yet, a large transportation funding shortfall remains.
One reason is that the state has not raised fuel taxes since 2011. Without indexing the gas tax, the state has foregone millions of dollars in revenue for transportation projects.
Funding also can come from the general fund, the largest share of state funding, which covers state programs from education to health care to corrections and more. Some Democrats object to using general fund money for transportation because they believe this diminishes funding for other state priorities, such as housing, mental health programs and much more. Hence, the last-minute move to essentially reverse part of last year’s compromise transportation funding deal, which allocated $200 million in general fund money to transportation.
If lawmakers want less general fund money to go to transportation, they need to identify a replacement source of funding. User fees — such as fuel taxes or mileage charges — are an option. Each 1-cent increase in the fuel tax, for example, could generate $7.5 million, according to the Maine Department of Transportation. This, on its own, is not the answer to the transportation funding shortfall, but it should be considered.
But not in the final days of the Legislature. Such changes deserve ample public hearings and legislative debate. It seems the best lawmakers can do at this point is to create another commission, and hopefully give it more teeth to make recommendations, to review funding options.
With many unmet needs, we understand the frustration with the spending plans currently before the Legislature. But making such a significant change in transportation funding, without sufficient hearings and debate, is not a reasonable solution, particularly when there continue to be other options worthy of consideration.