Tom Warne Report, 15 December 2012
ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Business leaders, transportation advocates and elected officials in Maryland are calling for Gov. Martin O’Malley and the legislature to raise more money for transportation projects, possibly through an increase to the state’s gas tax among other funding sources they say should be
“This should be the year,” Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III urged lawmakers at a hearing in Annapolis Wednesday. “If we don’t get it done this year, we might not get it done for the next eight years.”
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said that one of the General Assembly’s biggest failures last session was their inability to approve any of the proposed tax increases that would have generated more revenue for the transportation trust fund.
The Transportation Funding Summit was packed with more than 100 participants who gathered to brainstorm strategies to provide hundreds of millions needed to sustain the transportation program. Analysts predict that by 2018, the entire Department of Transportation capital spending program for highways will have nothing left for design and construction of new projects, and will go into “system preservation.” So far, O’Malley’s administration has remained mum on any plans, and his office said he is still formulating a legislative program.