Press Releases and Newsletters
NC governor keeping options open for revenues (Associated Press)
NC governor keeping options open for revenues (Associated Press)
RALEIGH, N.C. A day after Gov. Beverly Perdue signed into law a bill banning video sweepstakes games, she suggested she’d listen to proposals to legalize video poker again in North Carolina.
And after Perdue signed a bill designed to reform the state Alcoholic Beverage Control system, she said she still was interested in privatizing parts of the liquor system, although the idea was panned before this year’s session began. An outside evaluation of the system is moving ahead.
“I am not through with the ABC system yet,” Perdue said.
So why stir the pot for a pair of politically charged issues like alcohol and gambling?
She could believe that heavily regulation of video gaming, which has kept popping up in new forms in North Carolina since a 2006 ban on traditional video poker machines, is the best way to control it. Perhaps she thinks getting the state out of the liquor business is a better way to manage alcohol as views on drinking become more permissive.
But her willingness may be the result of the harsh fiscal realities state government may face for the third year in a row. With a shortfall already projected to exceed more than $3 billion beginning in mid-2011 – half of it from lost federal stimulus dollars – Perdue doesn’t want to close any avenue that could generate new state revenues.
Video poker and ABC privatization could bring in several hundred million dollars.
Perdue told reporters last week she had already started working on next year’s budget proposal three weeks into the new fiscal year.
“We have proven that we know how to invest in our core, which is economic development and education,” Perdue said. “If that requires privatizing a piece of state government, I believe the General Assembly will have the courage – and folks across the state – to do what is needed to do to stand up and be sure that North Carolina’s core missions will be all right.”
Perdue’s suggestion that the video sweepstakes games or video poker might be revived was surprising. She had just agreed with legislative leaders that the computer-based games sprouting up at Internet cafes, business service centers and makeshift “casinos” were bad.
“My primary concern was the fact that they had just morphed into something uncontrollable all over the state,” Perdue said.
Then, she added: “I think if you have video sweepstakes, whether it’s video poker or video machines in general, we really do need to have some kind of concentrated, organized, unified system of regulation where they are under a set of standards or regulations.”
Perdue spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said later while the governor wasn’t actively looking to revive video poker, “she would be open to look at legislation to see what direction to take that. The most important thing will be to regulate it very carefully and make sure it was regulated correctly.”
While Senate leader Marc Basnight, D-Dare, and House Speaker Joe Hackney, D-Orange, strongly oppose video poker, about two dozen House members declined to support the sweepstakes ban when it was approved earlier this month. A huge shortfall could help bring more support for legalizing video poker if sweepstakes games owner find another way to get around a ban.
A report from the North Carolina Education Lottery gave more credence to numbers pushed by the amusement machine owners for the past year about what the state could generate in tax revenues from regulating the industry. It found the state could receive $350 million in net revenues in its first year, reaching $576 million by the fourth year.
Bill Brooks with the North Carolina Family Policy Council is puzzled why Perdue would even consider giving video poker a new foothold in North Carolina. Perdue shouldn’t be lured by the potential short-term jackpot from the games because the cost to families harmed by gambling addictions and to the state through reduced economic activity when consumers’ money goes into games are much greater.
While lieutenant governor, Perdue cast the tie-breaking vote that approved lottery legislation in 2005.
“Every governor wants to make their mark,” Brooks said. “Maybe Gov. Perdue wants to be known for gambling.”
As for the ABC system, selling or leasing a chunk of the ABC system to an outside group seemed dead this spring after dozens of local government officials, substance abuse providers and religious leaders argued the state’s unique “control” system worked well at limiting alcohol abuse while providing more than $250 million in government revenues annually.
“The system has been a good system overall and we would like to keep it that way,” said Al Brown, a Concord city council member who opposes privatization.
Even if video poker and ABC privatization don’t occur, Perdue could benefit by talking like someone willing to consider new ideas, said Gary Pearce, a longtime Democratic consultant who used to work for Gov. Jim Hunt, Perdue’s mentor.
“I’m sure it’s about state finance issues,” Pearce said, but “it’s also a way of talking about shaking things up.”
Published Sun, Jul 25, 2010 09:11 AM
Modified Sun, Jul 25, 2010 09:21 AM
Transportation sales tax initiative in development (Albany Herald.com)
Transportation sales tax initiative in development (Albany Herald.com)
If approved by voters, a 2012 referendum would allow a one-percent sales tax to be collected for 10 years
ATLANTA, Ga. — The Georgia Department of Transportation is busy trying to implement the framework of a regional sales tax proposal that would fund transportation projects in 12 different regions statewide.
Approved by the Georgia General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue, HB 277 completely overhauls the way GDOT funds local transportation projects, Senior Planner Todd Long said.
The regions comprise the same areas as the existing Regional Development Commissions. Southwest Georgia’s region consists of Baker, Calhoun, Colquitt, Decatur, Dougherty, Early, Grady, Lee, Miller, Mitchell, Seminole, Terrell, Thomas and Worth counties.
According to Long, HB 277 would allow for those counties to levy a one-percent sales tax for 10 years that would fund transportation projects and programs specifically within the region, meaning the money raised in the district stays in the district.
Voters in the majority of the counties within the region will have to approve an August 21, 2012 referendum for it to pass, although individual counties will not be allowed to opt out of the funding.
Long said that the reason for the change in the way GDOT funds projects comes as the push for more fuel efficient vehicles has grown, which reduces the amount of revenues GDOT has been able to generate through the motor fuel surcharge.
“We’re getting to the point where its becoming not feasible to keep up with the maintenance and growth of infrastructure demands using just the motor fuel tax,” Long said.
A new funding mechanism for road and transportation projects is a double-edged sword for local governments that have watched as funding for GDOT’s Local Assistance Road Program, or LARP — the program that helps local government fund vital infrastructure improvements — has been steadily reduced, but who are also hesitant for change.
LARP will be replaced when HB 277 is implemented.
“There are definitely concerns,” Early County Commission Chairman Richard Ward said. “But compared to going year to year with LARP and watching it dwindle to a pittance, I’d be proud to get something down here to use, even if it doesn’t come directly into Early County, so long as it comes to the region.”
“Frankly, we’re tired of watching money flow into Atlanta and getting only unfunded mandates in return,” he said.
One of Ward’s biggest concerns, is one that GDOT is still grappling with — the extent of the Georgia Department of Revenue’s involvement in the whole process.
While Long has said money will have to sent to the Department of Revenue in Atlanta and then be divided back to the counties like current sales taxes are, its unclear whether GDOT would be willing to consider allowing the counties themselves to collect the sales taxes and remit them to Atlanta.
“I have some real issues with the Department of Revenue,” Ward said. “There is no transparency for the money that is being collected and returned now. How are we going to ensure that everyone is treated fairly?”
In Dougherty County, some officials share the same concern, citing an example last year when the DOR both released and withheld sales tax revenues for what they said were mistakes — one involving a manufacturer who apparently mistakenly paid sales taxes on exempt items for years and the other involving an unknown collection of sales taxes that ultimately was dispersed evenly to all counties who were participating in special local option sales tax programs.
The Georgia Open Records Act — the law that supposedly promotes open and transparent government to the public — specifically exempts the Georgia Department of Revenue.
As for the details of the initiative, Long provided The Herald a copy of a powerpoint presentation he’s been making around the state which explains much of the program.
Each region will have a roundtable which will consist of the county commission chairs and one municipal representative, meaning that each county would have two representatives on the roundtable.
These roundtables will ultimately set the projects that are to be funded using the sales taxes but the projects will come from a list developed or approved by the state.
Just like a SPLOST referendum, funding can only be granted to projects approved by the voters such as engineering, property acquisition, construction, maintenance, etc.
A portion of the funding, which is roughly estimated to be between $40 to $50 million per year in the Southwest Georgia Region, will be designated for discretionary use by local governments within the region. Based on the former LARP formula, that discretionary amount will be 25 percent in the SWGA Region.
At the end of the 10-year period, the tax can be reinstated or renewed with another project list through a vote of the majority of the counties in the region and special act of the Georgia General Assembly.
The Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission will serve as the trustee for each district’s funds, while GDOT will manage the budget, schedule, execution and delivery of all projects in the state.
A project’s status and whether it is over or under budget will be published and maintained by the Commissioner of the DOR on a website.
The bill also calls for the creation of several new transit-related government entities.
These include the Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant Program which combines former state-aid and LARP programs to help fund local projects; a Transit Governance Study Commission to prepare a report on the feasibility of linking regional public transit; and the Georgia Coordinating Committee for Rural and Human Services Transportation which will be part of the Governor’s Development Council and will examine how transportation services are provided throughout the state and make recommendation to the Office of Planning and Budget.
Posted: 12:00 AM Jul 25, 2010 July 25, 2010
Reporter: J.D. Sumner, government writer
Email Address: [email protected]
LaHood Says No Fuel Tax Increase Needed for Transport (The Journal of Commerce Online)
LaHood Says No Fuel Tax Increase Needed for Transport (The Journal of Commerce Online)
Highway funding to come from tolls, Obama’s proposed infrastructure fund
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said a combination of current-level gas tax receipts, road and bridge tolling and President Obama’s proposed infrastructure fund could offer a way to fund a long-term federal infrastructure program without new taxes.
Appearing before a heavily attended conference in Washington, D.C., of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, LaHood vowed “raising the gas tax is not an option” to increase money available for federal transport spending.
LaHood said the Highway Trust Fund’s income stream is “insufficient” to meet all the needs, and said “tolling can raise a lot of money” to augment it. The Obama administration has also asked Congress for a new $4 billion ongoing infrastructure fund that DOT would administer much like discretionary stimulus program grants, and LaHood said more use of creative public-private partnerships could help as well.
Adding up all such efforts, he said, raises the possibility of “a path forward without raising taxes.”
LaHood’s statement rejecting a fuel tax hike was the latest reiteration of the administration’s standing policy — to oppose raising federal gasoline and diesel fuel taxes while the economy is still recovering from recession and unemployment remains high.
But his July 23 comment also comes as the Department of Transportation prepares to issue guiding “principles” for how Congress develops its next multi-year surface transportation plan. Federal programs are due to expire at the end of this year unless lawmakers extend them again or pass a broad reauthorization that reshapes policy.
Many ARTBA members want the administration to back away from its fuel tax stance, and after his speech some were grumbling that a gas tax hike remains the simplest and least costly way to beef up transport infrastructure funding.
One ARTBA participant noted that LaHood early last year floated the idea of raising funds through a new tax on vehicle miles traveled, a concept that was soon rejected by the White House. Asked if a VMT plan could come back, LaHood quickly said, “No.”
Another participant asked him if a tax that helps transport programs could emerge from climate or energy legislation, but LaHood deflected the question by saying that is someone else’s portfolio. One bill offered by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., would have directed billions of dollars into the Highway Trust Fund from sale of carbon emission allowances, but that legislation has failed to gain broad support.
— Contact John D. Boyd at [email protected].
John D. Boyd | Jul 23, 2010 4:01PM GMT
Businesses question fees for Internet cafes (Fayetteville Observer)
Businesses question fees for Internet cafes (Fayetteville Observer)
A lawyer says Fayetteville’s “oppressive” fees on sweepstakes lounges are designed to close them and might be challenged in court.
“You can’t tax something out of existence,” said Lonnie Player Jr., a Fayetteville lawyer representing owners of the lounges.
The city intends to charge each owner a “privilege license” of $2,000 per location and $2,500 per computer terminal. For some locations with dozens of video gambling machines, the bill can run more than $100,000.
The city says the bills will be due Sept. 1, even though the machines will become illegal Dec. 1 under legislation that Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law Tuesday.
Player says courts have ruled on a case-by-case basis that excessive taxes or fees are punitive and unfair. He likened Fayetteville’s fees to zoning adult entertainment out of business – a practice the U.S. Constitution forbids.
Sweepstakes Internet cafes have sprung up all over North Carolina as a loophole to a state ban on gambling in 2007. They’re in bars and lounges and gas stations and strip malls. Customers buy Internet time to use the computer terminals for chances to win sweepstakes that can be redeemed for cash.
Several communities have begun taxing the industry. The fees vary. So do the communities’ intentions for collection.
Hope Mills adopted the same fees as Fayetteville in June. On Monday, town officials decided they would discount those fees by almost 60 percent because of the impending ban. In other words, they would charge for five months starting in July. Bills will go out in August.
Mike Bailey, Hope Mills’ chief building inspector, said the decision was made after a consultation with Town Attorney John Jackson.
“We felt that it was a better way of doing it, since they will no longer be able to operate after Dec. 1,” Bailey said. “It would be unfair to charge them for a whole year when we know they are not going to be in business past Dec. 1.”
Spring Lake’s newly adopted fees are $500 per location and $300 per terminal. Mayor Ethel Clark said officials might not charge the full amount, but a board decision has not been made.
Fayetteville City Attorney Karen McDonald has taken a different stance. She told the City Council last week the city can charge the fees because the businesses have not been banned yet. She said businesses are not refunded privilege license fees after they close.
How much the city intends to collect is not certain, but one city official this month pegged the figure at $1.2 million. The anticipated revenue was not used to balance the new budget, so the council will need to decide what to do with the money.
On Sunday, Mayor Tony Chavonne told the City Council in a weekly e-mail update that he would like to use the extra money to annex Shaw Heights, an impoverished community along Murchison Road next to Fort Bragg.
“As you recall, there were some upfront costs associated with the annexation,” the mayor’s e-mail said. “The area should have been annexed years ago and lies directly on a major new corridor directly between our city and the military base.”
Irked business owners
Owners of the sweepstakes lounges point to Fayetteville’s wide discrepancy in privilege license fees as evidence they are being overcharged.
For “topless entertainment,” the fee is $100 a year and $25 per peep-show machine. At cinemas, the owner pays $200 per movie screen; others pay $5 per electric video game. Fortunetellers have to pay $1,000.
The business owners also complain they were given little notice. Fayetteville officials first publicly discussed them in June.
When Ann Drabek went to City Hall on June 28 to apply for a privilege license, she was unaware of the fees. She wanted to open a second sweepstakes lounge in Fayetteville. Her first one, Lucky Charm Internet Cafe, opened in Hope Mills last fall.
She noted on her Fayetteville application that her business would involve “phone time sales” and “sweepstakes.” She said a city employee in the Finance Department, after a check with the zoning rules, told her to strike out “sweepstakes” from the application and, according to her receipt, she paid $100 for the privilege license.
The City Council adopted the fees, along with a new budget, that same evening of June 28.
On July 9, Drabek opened her Lucky Charm location on Ireland Drive in Fayetteville. Inside, 28 black-paneled machines with blinking screens greet customers. They are offered free snacks and sodas or bottled water. They can play blackjack and variations of poker or watch cherries and diamonds spin around on the screen.
Another 15 machines stored in back rooms are not ready for the public, Drabek said. They have to be programmed and outfitted to meet North Carolina law, she said.
Fayetteville doesn’t care.
Someone from the city stopped by last week to do an inventory and told Drabek that all 43 machines would be counted. She expects to get a bill for $109,500 from the city soon.
“It’s an absurd amount of money they are trying to charge us,” she said.
Drabek, a commercial real estate agent, said she never would have opened a second sweepstakes lounge in Fayetteville had she known about the fees. Drabek knew last month that legislators in Raleigh might ban the machines, but she didn’t want to wait for the state to act, she said.
Chris Marion, who operates Crazy Hank’s in a strip mall on Strickland Bridge Road, said Fayetteville’s fees were designed to drive him and most others out of the business. His bill will be about $50,000 for his business, which he opened in May.
“Once the state passed the law, I thought that was the end of it,” he said. “I never would in a million years think the city would try to extort $50,000 from a business that has to close in five months.”
He said his sweepstakes lounge is turning a profit, but he doesn’t want to pay that kind of bill.
“I think the city thinks these things are cash cows,” he said. “For the new guys like us – we are pretty small – it’s not doing what we thought they would do.”
Player said he got involved this spring on behalf of the industry, talking to town officials in Calabash, Clinton, Laurinburg and other places where the fees were being considered. He said he has persuaded some towns to forgo the fees and others to substantially reduce them.
Player said the fees raise constitutional questions and run afoul with a law giving the federal government exclusive authority to tax the Internet. But his clients want to be practical.
“They welcome regulation,” he said. “They just didn’t welcome oppressive regulation.”
Staff writer Andrew Barksdale can be reached at [email protected] or 486-3565.
Published: 12:23 AM, Wed Jul 21, 2010
By Andrew Barksdale
Staff writer
Greensboro ABC manager elected to association post (Greensboro News and Record)
Greensboro ABC manager elected to association post (Greensboro News and Record)
Katie Alley, the general manager of Greensboro’s ABC system, has been tapped as president elect of the North Carolina Association of ABC Boards, a group that represents the more than 160 local liquor boards across the state.
Alley faces scrutiny following a report released by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission that suggested she may have improperly taken gifts, hotel rooms and other favors from liquor industry representatives.
The Greensboro ABC Board is scheduled to meet Thursday morning to review the report and possible decide what action, if any, to take against Alley.
Alley has been secretary treasurer of the Raleigh-based association, which provides training to local boards and represents their interests before the North Carolina General Assembly. Alley’s lawyer said Wednesday that she had accepted the post of president elect during a banquet Tuesday night. The association’s annual meeting was held in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Local liquor boards are independent units of local government, appointed by either county commissioners or city councils. They operate what amount to monopolies on liquor distribution in the territories that they cover.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
By Mark Binker
Staff Writer
Perdue open to regulated video poker (News and Observer)
Perdue open to regulated video poker (News and Observer)
Gov. Bev Perdue, who signed into law Tuesday a ban on video sweepstakes games, said Wednesday she is open to regulating and legalizing the games.
Perdue made her comments after a signing ceremony for a different bill Wednesday. She signed the sweepstakes ban in private. On Wednesday, she said one of her concerns about the sweepstakes industry was the unchecked proliferation of parlors that allowed for profiteering.
“I think if you have video sweepstakes, whether it is video poker or video machines in general, we really do need to have some kind of concert organized, unified system of regulation where they are under a standard set of rules and regulations where we can be sure that nobody is profiteering from it,” Perdue said.
A spokeswoman later clarified that Perdue was open to ideas on how to regulate the industry, but was not actively pushing to legalize it.
That’s point of view opens a big gulf between Perdue and the lawmakers who voted for the ban. Many of them, particularly in the Senate, spoke of the industry as an evil that preys on the poor.
The industry says it could raise at least half a billion a year in revenue. Just before Perdue signed the bill, an industry group pleaded with Perdue to veto it.
Submitted by bniolet on 2010-07-21 11:57
AASHTO Expert Urges “New Strategy” to make America’s Bridges Healthy (AASHTO)
AASHTO Expert Urges “New Strategy” to make America’s Bridges Healthy (AASHTO)
Washington, DC – Built to last 50 years, the bulk of the nation’s 590,000 bridges are 43 years old; and 74,000 bridges (12.4%) are classified as “structurally deficient,” meaning that one or more aspects of a bridge’s structural condition require attention. Meanwhile, truck traffic has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, and the trucking industry is pushing for heavier loads.
“We are facing a perfect storm regarding our bridges,” said Malcolm T. Kerley, P.E., Chief Engineer with the Virginia Department of Transportation. Testifying on behalf of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Kerley told members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Highways and Transit that “current funding levels are not adequate for the job at hand. A huge backlog of bridge needs remains.” (Kerley’s oral and witten testimony is available at http://bridges.transportation.org/Pages/WHAT’SNEW.aspx)
Kerley told lawmakers that states are investing substantially more in state dollars on bridges than is provided under the Federal Highway Bridge Program. For example, in 2004, $10.5 billion was invested in bridge rehabilitation by all levels of government – more than twice the $5.1 billion apportioned through the Federal Bridge Program that year.
In this period of economic downturn, when governments are looking to do more with fewer resources, Kerley urged Congress to focus on how best to preserve the health of all bridges through what he described as “asset management strategies.”
“States need federal funding to reduce the slippage of bridges into the ‘structurally deficient’ category,” Kerley said. “And we all get more bang for our taxpayer buck by preserving a bridge early in its life rather than by having to completely replace it later on down the road. In order to accomplish this, states need to be able to fund a wider range of projects than just their lowest-rated bridges,” Kerley said.
“Current law requires states to address the worse deficient bridges first, but this approach doesn’t work” Kerley testified. “If we had all the funding we needed, states could immediately reconstruct or rehabilitate all structurally deficient bridges – fixing the worst first while simultaneously investing to prevent an even larger number of bridges from deteriorating just enough to push them over the edge to structural deficiency. We call these ‘cusp’ bridges – those bridges which we can prevent from becoming structurally deficient.”
Kerley said that ‘cusp’ bridges that are not yet structurally deficient begin to deteriorate before states can address their problems. And since there is not enough money to fix all the deficient bridges before others deteriorate into this category, it becomes a constant game of “catch up.”
For more information on the status of nation’s bridge inventory, download AASHTO’s report Bridging the Gap at http://tiny.cc/9fu4c.
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The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) is the “Voice of Transportation” representing State Departments of Transportation in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. AASHTO is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association serving as a catalyst for excellence in transportation. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/aashtospeaks
Rendell calls on lawmakers to act on road maintenance (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Rendell calls on lawmakers to act on road maintenance (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
HARRISBURG – Gov. Rendell said Monday “there is no excuse” for lawmakers to put off dealing with how to pay for maintaining Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges, setting the stage for a showdown over the state’s growing transportation funding problem.
Rendell said he wants legislators to return in late August for a special session to map out a solution to closing a $472 million funding gap created when the federal government earlier this year rejected the state’s proposal to put tolls on I-80.
The response from top Republican legislators: Wait till next year. They evince a growing desire to deal with the issue after a new governor is inaugurated in January.
“That’s not acceptable,” Rendell said Monday during a noon news conference in the Capitol. “We would lose $472 million of funding this year, and 100 bridge projects and over 300 road projects would have to be discontinued.”
“We’ve got to act,” he added. “This is the time for political courage.”
Erik Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), said that because there was no consensus on a funding plan, the current focus was on forthcoming Senate Transportation Committee hearings on the issue. One is scheduled for tomorrow, at which Rendell is expected to testify.
Arneson said that if the hearings produce a solution acceptable to all sides, “that would be terrific.”
“It’s not that there’s a desire to wait until next year to resolve this, so much as it is an understanding that this is a difficult issue and a multifaceted issue” and could take time to resolve, Arneson said.
He and other Republicans dispute that there is an absolute deadline for action, while acknowledging there could be delays in road and bridge projects if the debate gets pushed to January.
Rendell had initially called for taxing profits of major oil companies or leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Neither idea gained much support.
On Monday, he said he would sign on to raising all transportation fees – such as for driver’s licenses, inspection stickers, and vehicle registrations – by the rate of inflation since the last time they were increased.
To support his argument, his office put out a fact sheet showing, for example, that the state’s annual $36 car registration fee had not gone up since 1997 and that raising it to $45 would generate more than $70 million for road repairs.
Rendell said raising the various fees, together with a proposed increase in the gasoline tax of about 3 cents per gallon, would bring in the needed money. The gasoline tax currently is 31.2 cents a gallon, state officials said.
Rendell said he would also support “electronic surveillance” on the turnpike to generate an additional $30 million. Asked later to explain this, his spokesman, Gary Tuma, said the idea was to set up cameras that would snap photos of license plates so officials could determine if drivers’ registrations and insurance were up to date – and fine them if they were not.
Most of those fees-and-fines proposals, like the call for an August session, got little traction in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Rendell had initially called for both chambers to convene a special session in Harrisburg on Tuesday to start talks on how to come up with road-repair money. But lawmakers are on summer break and not due to return until September.
Even then, they have only a handful of session dates scheduled before the November election, making it tough to tackle any big-ticket items.
And they already have their hands full. During June negotiations on the state budget, Rendell and top lawmakers agreed to put off until September the debate on several critical policy questions, including how to tax the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. That could eat up a large chunk of the legislature’s limited time.
All the more reason, Rendell said Monday, for the legislature to act now. “There is no excuse,” he said.
By Angela Couloumbis
Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau
Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement (Wall Street Journal)
Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement (Wall Street Journal)
Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; ‘Back to Stone Age’
SPIRITWOOD, N.D.—A hulking yellow machine inched along Old Highway 10 here recently in a summer scene that seemed as normal as the nearby corn swaying in the breeze. But instead of laying a blanket of steaming blacktop, the machine was grinding the asphalt road into bits.
“When
Outside this speck of a town, pop. 78, a 10-mile stretch of road had deteriorated to the point that residents reported seeing ducks floating in potholes, Mr. Zimmerman said. As the road wore out, the cost of repaving became too great. Last year, the county spent $400,000 on an RM300 Caterpillar rotary mixer to grind the road up, making it look more like the old homesteader trail it once was.
Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.
In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as “poor man’s pavement.” Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.
The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring “washboard” effect of driving on rutted gravel.
But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.
“I’d rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill,” said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman’s Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood.
Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.
“A lot of these roads have just deteriorated to the point that they have no other choice than to turn them back to gravel,” says Larry Galehouse, director of the National Center for Pavement Preservation at Michigan State University. Still, “we’re leaving an awful legacy for future generations.”
Some experts caution that gravel roads can be costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed. A gravel road “is not a free road,” says Purdue University’s John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled “Back to the Stone Age.”
Paving grew in popularity in the early 20th century as more cars hit streets and spread when the federal government built the Interstate Highway System.
Over the years, many of the two-lane arteries that connect country roads with metro areas have deteriorated under rising traffic and the growing weight of farm combines, logging trucks and other heavy equipment.
Frederick Wachtel, county engineer in Coshocton County, Ohio, says his budget, largely driven by fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, was off 5% last year, the first decline in nearly 20 years. He is now letting some of his roads return to nature.
In Spiritwood one day recently, a soft breeze carried the scents of cow manure and hot asphalt over the tall broom grass. The giant Caterpillar chugged along at a speed of 2.4 feet per minute and pulverized Old Highway 10 into a black dust with chunks of rock and pavement. A piece of equipment following behind rolled the surface flat.
The machines rumbled along a path carved by homesteaders’ covered wagons in the 1800s. Over time, grain elevators and railroad depots sprung up along the route, which became known as the Old Red Trail. Later, the road was paved and renamed Highway 10.
After Interstate 94 was built alongside the road in the 1950s, it became Old Highway 10. Traffic volumes gradually dropped until Old 10 became a lazy backcountry road dotted with abandoned farmsteads. In the 1960s the state gave Old 10 to the counties it ran through, leaving them to pay for upkeep. North Dakota’s Stutsman County got a 30-mile stretch.
The gift became a burden. The Stutsman highway department, which gets the bulk of its funds from local property taxes, state fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, let the road fall into disrepair as it juggled other projects. Every year without major maintenance, the road became more expensive to fix.
Judy Graves of Ypsilanti, N.D., voted against the measure to raise taxes for roads. But she says she and others nonetheless wrote to Gov. John Hoeven and asked him to stop Old 10 from being ground up because it still carries traffic to a Cargill Inc. malting plant. She says the county has mismanaged its finances and badly neglected roads.
“Our expenses outweigh the income,” says Mr. Zimmerman, who has been with the county highway department for nearly 30 years. He says the county will pay about $2,600 per mile annually for the newly ground-up road, as against about $75,000 per mile to reconstruct it.
Gayne Gasal, who lives along the redone stretch of road, says it has turned out “better than we all thought.” But Sportsman’s Bar owner Hilda Kuntz worries that the classic cars and bikers that roll through town in the summer will stay away.
“It’s going to kill my business,” she said.
Write to Lauren Etter at [email protected]
By LAUREN ETTER
New Political Realities May Sidetrack the Transportation Reauthorization (Innovation News Briefs)
New Political Realities May Sidetrack the Transportation Reauthorization (Innovation News Briefs)
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Over the past eight months the U.S. Department of Transportation has been conducting a series of “listening sessions” around the country to solicit new ideas from stakeholders and interested citizens for the next multi-year surface transportation bill. The sixth and final session on the national listening tour was held at the U.S. DOT headquarters on July 14. Participating in the latest town hall meeting was the full complement of the department’s senior management team (save Secretary Ray LaHood). Complementing the session with U.S. DOT officials were four panel sessions involving local officials and transportation professionals discussing local transportation issues, program funding, state and local needs and outreach to the public.
A Game Changing Event
The latest listening session took place amid growing speculation by political analysts that the Democrats may lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November. This speculation has been reinforced by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs who commented on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press” and again at his regular press briefing the following day, that “there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.” Gibb’s conclusion was not inaccurate, given that about 60 Democratic seats are in jeopardy and Republicans need a net gain of only 39 to re-take the House. But, as Washington Post political observer Dana Milbank pointed out, when the president’s chief spokesman announces that his party is in trouble, it could become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
A Republican takeover of the House would add to the already significant political uncertainties surrounding the future of the multi-year surface transportation legislation. A Republican victory would mean almost certain congressional opposition to raising the gas tax in the next Congress. According to Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, a total of 173 members of the U.S. House and 412 candidates for House seats as well as 33 sitting senators and 70 candidates for the Senate have signed the so-called Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The Pledge commits them to oppose and vote against any and all tax hikes if elected or re-elected, and to focus on spending restraint rather than increasing taxes to pay for new spending. Unlike other similar promises this one is in writing, with a signature and two witnesses.
A Republican victory in the House would also mean an organizational realignment in the House congressional committees. The coveted chairmanship of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee would pass to Rep. John Mica (R-FL) who has already gone on record as saying that “the gas tax is dead” (see our NewsBrief of June 3, “Some Frank and Unscripted Comments from Capitol Hill.”) Nor would Rep. James Oberstar’s (D-MN) ambitious dream of a $500 billion six-year surface transportation bill necessarily remain intact under Republican House leadership, which would be anxious to distance itself from free-spending Democrats and may not fully share current transportation policy priorities of the Obama Administration .
Strengthening Republican resolve to avoid a fuel tax increase in the next Congress would be the projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicating that the surface transportation program is assured of adequate funding (i.e. at the levels authorized for FY 2009) at least through the end of Fiscal Year 2012. With assured funding possibly as long as mid-2013 (if our reading of the CBO projections is correct), a Republican Congress might well decide there is no reason to hurry and postpone consideration of a multi-year bill until after the presidential election of 2012 when a program of infrastructure investment can be considered in an environment less colored by electoral politics.
A Disappointing Session
The DOT Listening session was in some respects disappointing. In a typical “inside the Beltway” fashion, the meeting offered a tribune to a variety of special interests and advocacy groups to advertise their ideas, big and small, and to plead for government attention. For its part, the DOT leadership offered few hints as to its own thinking. However, since the goal of the “listening sessions” was for the DOT officials to, well… listen, they could be excused for revealing little of their intentions.
However, if the purpose of the listening sessions was to offer the DOT leadership exciting fresh ideas on how to reform and refocus the federal transportation program and how to give it new direction and a new sense of purpose, we think the assembled Washington transportation community could have done better.
But then, if White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is indeed correct in his prediction, the U.S. Transportation Department need not worry about having to craft a reuthorization bill any time soon.
July19, 2010
