Tom Warne Report, 30 November 2012
MADISON – Gov. Scott Walker said this week that he intends to work to keep the Zoo Interchange reconstruction and expansion of I-39/90 on schedule but at the same time also discarded a gas tax hike as a possibility to pay for such major projects. This month the state Department of Transportation made a budget request that said unless more funding was given to road projects, the state should delay completion of the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee County by two years, from 2018 to 2020. The department also warned about possible delays to widening I-39/90 from the Illinois border to Madison.
Transportation officials said keeping those projects on schedule would require delaying other construction projects around the state if more funding was not located.
“I’d be inclined to like to see that stay on schedule,” Walker said Monday of work on the Zoo Interchange and I-39/90. “The question becomes, how can you do that, balancing out the resources that are available without delaying other projects around the state of Wisconsin? Because I think that’s also a viable concern is that if one or two big projects like that, if they are back on schedule, does that delay smaller projects elsewhere across the state?”
“I don’t think there’s a big appetite for a gas tax increase, so we have to figure out some other way to do that that stays not only with where the public but the Legislature is in the future,” Walker told reporters at a Capitol news conference.
Walker has until he introduces his proposed budget in February to decide whether he will go along with delaying eight projects including the Zoo Interchange. The $1.7 billion project is scheduled to start next year.