In just a week’s time, coronavirus seems to have changed everything. In Maine, as in most other states, it prompted the nearly unprecedented shutdown of the legislative session just as lawmakers were attending to their major business.
While Gov. Janet Mills has pledged she will recall legislators as soon as possible, no one knows when that might be. A hastily prepared supplemental budget will take effect immediately – more than $50 million less in spending than the $127 million Mills proposed earlier.
A few large questions have already been answered, however. There will be no resolution of the funding crisis that has dogged the Department of Transportation for years, but worsened drastically during the LePage administration.
That’s when the combination of rapidly rising construction prices and the administration’s removal of even inflation adjustments to the gasoline tax left DOT with only two-thirds the revenue needed to keep roads and bridges from further deterioration, let alone build anything new.
Gov. Mills didn’t address the crisis in her first biennial budget, and a Blue Ribbon commission on transportation funding was convened to provide some answers. For awhile, its meetings seemed promising – to the extent that its work was carried over from last year, with the hope that clear policy directions would emerge.
The main answer seemed to be a substantial increase in fuel taxes, on the order of seven to nine cents a gallon – added to the 30 cents in effect for the past decade – combined with some access to general fund money, either short-term or long term.
And $10 million from the general fund is included in the $73 million supplemental budget approved last Tuesday – perhaps a drop in the bucket, but significant in that there was anything at all. Yet the task force disbanded without any substantial recommendations on funding, even though the stars seemed aligned in a way they haven’t been before.
Traditionally, among business interests, construction contractors favor funding increases, since they benefit, and trucking companies oppose them, because they have to pay more. This time, however, truckers threw their weight behind a nine cent boost – the largest in decades – which would seem to provide political cover for reluctant lawmakers.
It wasn’t enough. Republicans legislators on the task force wouldn’t support any increase, and Democrats weren’t about to proceed without them – that much had been agreed beforehand.
There’s some irony here. Republicans inveigh against any tax increases, but also criticize the annual $100 million general fund bond issues that keep the highway fund afloat.
Nonetheless, they readily voted for the latest bond, LD 2134, a governor’s bill, which offers $105 million for transportation and $15 million to expand broadband coverage. In the House, there were just seven “no” votes; the Senate passed it by voice vote.
The only change from the original version is that voters will now see it in June, rather than November. It’s unlikely any other bond issues will be on the ballot this year.
Still, the highway fund remains $220 million short of break-even levels, a number sure to rise during a recession, when people drive less. The earliest the Legislature can return to the issue will be 2021, when funding could be included in another biennial budget.
Everyone who’s driven any distance off the interstates in Maine knows exactly how bad the roads are. Short sections rebuilt in the 1960s and ’70s – in anticipation that the job would be finished some day soon – are instead surrounded by crumbling pavement.
It’s possible to take another course. Illinois’s new governor, J.B. Pritzker – like Mills, a first-term Democrat – turned heads when he proposed doubling that state’s gas tax last year, from 19 to 38 cents, the first time it had been increased since 1990.
Despite initial opposition, bipartisan majorities in the Legislature overwhelming approved the plan, with support from the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. The higher taxes, it’s estimated, will cost the average driver about $100 a year – and should eventually save more than that from reduced wear-and-tear caused by driving on bad roads.
With plunging gas prices and the prospect of sharply lower private investment, Pritzker’s “folly” begins to look more like a stroke of excellent timing. The benefits of his ambitious capital spending program will continue well beyond any recession, and the financial pain seems manageable.
Since both parties supported the bill, it’s unlikely anyone will lose their seat over the vote – always the big concern whenever tax increases are even in prospect.
None of this will happen in Maine this year, as we continue to kick the can down the road. Gov. Mills, meanwhile, will no doubt be watching with interest as the Illinois experiment runs its course.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, reporter, opinion writer and author for 35 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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