Voters to Decide Billions in Ballot Issues as Reports See Infrastructure Spending Flatten

AASHTO Journal, 28 October 2016

The November elections will see voters deciding more than $250 billion in transportation investment ballot measures, at a time when reports say states and the national economy are weighed down by slack infrastructure spending.

The Eno Center for Transportation on Oct. 2 unveiled what it called a comprehensive database of transportation ballot measures, many of them local transit questions, and said by its count “there is over $250 billion at stake” on Nov. 8 across the nation.

Last month, the American Public Transportation Association said Election Day would bring decisions on $200 billion just in transit project funding.

capitol0816.jpgAnd both major party presidential candidates have vowed to put major infrastructure investment proposals before Congress early next year, as a way to boost economic growth as well as to improve U.S. transportation systems.

Already, a number of states in recent years have opted to raise additional revenues for roads, bridges, transit and alternative transportation projects. Most recently, New Jersey adopted a 23-cent-per-gallon increase in gasoline excise taxes to shore up its own Transportation Trust Fund, while cutting other taxes on state residents.

Officials in many other states are discussing funding options that legislatures might take up in the coming year.

But transportation industry officials say despite all this, the nation needs significantly more funding dedicated to transportation projects to shrink the growing backlog.

Bud Wright, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said this month that policymakers in Washington need to come up with new revenue to better address U.S. infrastructure needs and to sustain the Highway Trust Fund over the long term.

Even though Congress in 2015 passed a five-year surface transportation measure, AASHTO has said it provided only modest increases in funding and built in a large 2020 rescission of funds that can disrupt states’ project planning.

An Oct. 26 Wall Street Journal story also drove the point home, saying that a slowdown in state and local infrastructure investment was “acting as a headwind” on the economy. The story cited such examples as a delay in 24 road projects by the Kansas Department of Transportation to help balance the rest of the state budget, putting off work worth more than $500 million.

The Journal looked beyond transportation projects to include other sorts of state infrastructure such as public buildings and sewer systems. In all, it said: “Through this year’s first eight months, state and local construction spending was down 1.4 percent from a year earlier, while federal-government construction outlays were flat and private-sector construction spending was up 7 percent.”

Part of the problem for states is that they suffered steep declines in tax receipts during the recession and many have not yet made up for it. In addition, as the AASHTO Journal has reported, the plunge in prices of various energy commodities has cut into mineral-dependent state revenues in various states from Alaska to Louisiana, North Dakota to New Mexico.

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