It’s a start
Rendell taking lead on transportation Gov. Ed Rendell has a message for the Legislature: Step away from the sunscreen.
The governor held a news conference this week to attempt to cajole party leaders into calling back lawmakers from their summer vacation in an attempt to find funding for highway, bridge and transit projects. Rendell wants to cut the summer break by several weeks and get lawmakers to resume a special session by Aug. 23.
“I believe we’re going to need more time than the days that are scheduled in September and October to do this,” he said.
The state needs to find the $472 million a year that never materialized after the federal government scuttled a plan to put tolls on Interstate 80. Without it, numerous road improvements, bridge replacements and mass-transit projects across the state won’t be completed.
Of course, finding that $472 million likely will require something politically unpopular, which makes it incredibly unlikely that lawmakers will make much headway – if any – during an election year. It’s just another glaring example of the dysfunction of Harrisburg that even an issue that has direct impact for every legislator’s district gets kicked down the road because of political expediency.
This isn’t an issue of differing viewpoints – everyone in Harrisburg agrees that we need this bridge and road work – but to find a consensus during an election year would involve lawmakers taking a risk, which they’ve shown no inclination to do in the past.
While lawmakers drag their feet, roads and bridges across the Commonwealth are deteriorating. Is it going to take a disaster like the 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis to get results?
The governor, whose original proposals to tax major oil companies’ profits and lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike have gone nowhere, said Monday he would support a grab bag of tax and fee increases – including increasing fees for driver’s licenses and registrations and boosting the gasoline tax by about 3 cents a gallon – to make up the I-80 toll revenue.
While we can’t necessarily get behind all Rendell’s proposals – some are really out there, like installing surveillance cameras at toll plazas and highway ramps to catch uninsured drivers – but at least he’s got concrete suggestions. The GOP seems content to do nothing in hopes that Tom Corbett occupies the governor’s mansion next year. But, even if Corbett does win in November, the transportation issue would have to wait several months while he gets his feet under him and then before we know it, it’s time for the budget and transportation gets put off again.
The problem is that the longer lawmakers wait on this issue, the worse it’s going to get. A 3 cents-a-gallon tax increase may seem unpalatable today, but that can quickly become a 10 cents-a-gallon increase next year as transportation projects statewide get worse – and thus more expensive to fix.
Of course, we may be more willing to wait on Corbett and the GOP if they could identify what alternatives they would pursue in order to make up the $472 million. Unfortunately, they are unwilling or unable.
It’s hard to say whether or not Rendell’s proposals are the way to go, but as long as the GOP is clammed up, they’re at least a start.
Now all he has to do is get lawmakers to cut vacation short and get back on the job. After that comes the neigh-impossible: getting self-interested lawmakers in both parties to put their constituents before their re-election prospects.