Arkansas Blue Ribbon Committee On Highway Finance – June 25, 2009
Posted on June 25th, 2009
Date & Time: Tuesday, June 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM
Location: Room 151, State Capitol
Agenda: http://tr.im/pJxW
Attachments: TBD
10:07 am – Opening statements from Chairman and Vice Chairman. Vice Chairman Allen Maxwell drew our attention to an article in the June 2009 issue of “Governing” Magazine.
10:10 am – A representative from the Association of Arkansas Counties is currently discussing county government tax levies.
10:19 am – The property tax millage distribution between cities and counties is being discussed. I anticipate the Municipal League representative is choking on his coffee right now. Apparently the cities get 1/2 of the millage of the ratio of the city population to the overall county population. There seems to be a lot of interest in looking into that situtation further.
10:23 am – Mr. Michael Brown, Legislative Analyst in the Policy Analysis and Research Services division of the Bureau of Legislative Research is presenting a cross state comparision of Arkansas’s highway financing and infrastructure quality.
10:26 am – Arkansas has about the same number of highway miles but only half the population of Tennessee.
10:28 am – The cost of highway construction tracked pretty close to inflation for the last half century until Hurricane Katrina, where costs jumped drastically. Imagine that, when the government dumps tons of subsidy into an industry it causes inflation. I wonder what will happen to the cost of college tuition once the lottery money starts coming in?
10:31 am – BLR’s report says that Arkansas’s average highway funding has increased, in real terms, since 1982 an average of 3.10%. In a seven state sample that includes Arkansas and the six surrounding states, Arkansas’s per capita highway funding ranks fourth and its funding per highway mile ranks last.
10:34 am – Based upon IRI (International Roughness Index) data, there is not a significant correlation between road quality index and amount of funding.
10:36 am – A comparison of road quality among the seven states in the sample indicates that Arkansas’s road quality is among the best in the region. Arkansas ranks third among the surrounding states in overall road quality as measured by the International Roughness Index. Arkansas is below the national average in the percentage of roads that are rated “Mediocre” or “Poor,” indicating that Arkansas’s road quality if also better than the national average.
10:44 am – Dr. Wayne Miller, Professor with the Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock is presenting research proposals and options availiable to the Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance.
10:50 am – Here is a list of Proposed Possibilities:
- Estimate the economic contribution of proposed highway construction and maintenance spending on the Arkansas economy.
- Estimate the economic contribution of proposed highway construction and maintenance spending for local (regional) projects to show impact of proposed highway spending.
- Estimate value of highway investments (using existing studies) on safety, travel time, motor fuel costs, consumer costs, lost time, and productivity.
- Topics to address: 1) cost of deferring highway spending, 2) impact of severance tax funding, 3) sustainablity of funding for AHTD, 4) increase in property values due to highway investments, 5) and limitations imposed by weight restrictions.
- Good transportation infrastructure and impact on tourism.
- Provide the above information in the context of the current state of the highway system and highway funding system in the state, including funding gap analysis.
- Corridor analysis of highway construction projects.
10:57 am – If you think that all that sounds like “new-speak” for spending taxpayer dollars to convince taxpayers why it is okay for government to rape and pillage your paycheck for yet more taxes, then you would probably be correct.
11:02 am – Committee members have broken all pretense of objective study. They actually said that we need to get and develop information that can be put into a thirty second television ad “to convince the public to support whatever solution we come up with“.
11:08 am – I cannot believe that this group is actually talking about “selling” the solution before they have even come up with a solution. Meanwhile, they are intentionally avoiding all discussion about the the efficient distribution of the funds by population or objective measures of highway quality statewide.
11:10 am – There appears to be a consensus of the committee that 1) there must be more tax funds raised, 2) that the fair and efficient distribution of highway dollars will NOT be discussed, and 3) that this is a critical-sky-is-falling situation that needed to happen as quickly as possible.
11:19 am – See the 7 points above at 10:50 am? That cost you the taxpayer $50,000. [Update: Apparently the research they want to do will cost that much, that price was not the cost of the proposal.]
10:20 am – It seems that the the PRIMARY concern of the committee and the topic that the discussion keeps returning to is that we need to do the work to convince the public to support (second time I have heard this) “whatever proposal we come up with.”
10:24 am – Some discussion of the effect of the movement to electric cars from liquid fuels. This has infrastructure impacts, but it seems that there is opposition to increased “per gallon” fuel taxes and instead seems to be some committee support of a “per mile” taxing method.
11:30 am – Dan Flowers is addressing the committee right now. He is apparently concerned about the apparent conflicting information provided by the Bureau of Legislative Research and the need analysis presented by Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
11:33 am – Mr. Mike Wilson is suggesting evaluating an internet tax as a method of highway finance. Hahahahahahaha! You guys are going to love that!
11:49 am – This committee is currently presenting motions to change it’s charge. I don’t know why I even bother. This committee was established to find a fair and sustainable funding method for highway finance. We don’t need to establish needs. Everybody knows there are regional needs. We don’t need it to be a publicity board for “selling” a tax to the public. The Bureau of Legislative Research presented that in general Arkansas highways are above average, Dan Flowers demostrates that there are indeed needs. If there is no conflict in those two things, and I believe there is not, then that means that what we have is regional needs, but don’t need large scale statewide investments. The voters in this state will support highway funding if the fairness in distribution is addresses. The two most populous areas of the state are not going to vote for another tax for highways under any circumstances if they are going to get 1/5th to 1/10th of the funding amount as other areas in the state.
11:55 am – Committee adjourned.
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