One can only guess what a politician who has been in office a long time thinks of his constituents. Day after day, he must contend with two problems. How does he raise money? How does he spend it? This little post addresses the former problem.
Consider the article referenced below. It begins…
Behold, America: the taxman cometh.
Even as taxpayers are struggling to make ends meet in a crumbling, tumbling economy, your friendly neighborhood (and state and federal) government is having a hard time making do with the meager trillions you’re throwing its way, so it’s relying on an old maxim:
If it exists, it can be taxed. (continued here)
A politician must raise two sorts of money. He must raise revenues to fill the coffers of the government treasury. In addition, he must find donors for his campaign. What is his ideal solution? He finds a tax that raises money for his projects by taxing somebody else’s constituents. At the same time the excuse for the tax gives him an excuse to direct government revenues to potential political donors.
It would appear that the Speaker of the House of Delegates, William J. Howell, has hit upon such a lovely, ideal solution.
Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell proposed Thursday that his state construct a sweeping network of highway and road tolls that could be leased to private companies, generating new transportation funding to offset declining revenues from gasoline taxes.
The tolls could be modeled after successful projects that have generated billions of new dollars in the Midwest and would allow Virginia to collect user fees from the millions who traverse its roads – from the Interstate 95 corridor that is a key gateway to the Southeast to the Hampton Roads arteries that lead to the state’s beaches and tourist destinations, Mr. Howell told editors and reporters of The Washington Times.
“I love the concept of tolls,” Mr. Howell, a Stafford Republican, said. “I think we’re going to have to see more tolls in Virginia.” (from here)
While I too favor the idea of tolls and user fees (see here), I see no need for complex, hard to regulate, public/private partnerships that are bound to be abused (see here). Without giving any rich fatcats any sweetheart deals, we can use bonds to fund the construction and maintenance of roads. What is important about tolls is that the need to collect tolls discourages the government from building roads that citizens do not want. Do we need suspiciously cozy public/private partnerships just to build toll roads? NO!
The point of a toll or user fee is to have the USER PAY for the thing that the user is using. We do not force people to pay taxes just for the sake of financing the government, giving politicians money to spend, or to give sweetheart deals to Friends of Bill.
We must remember that Speaker Howell was amongst the vanguard leading the charge for HB3202. Unfortunately, he has proven he cannot be trusted.
What are the likely ramifications for Howell’s tax? If we implement a system of public/private toll roads for Howell’s sweethearts, we risk having anything that moves taxed as much as Howell can connive to tax it. Tourists coming into the state will be taxed just to reach their destination. Your food, clothing, and anything that must be moved will be taxed even before you can buy it — and pay a sales tax. The net result could be that Virginia becomes a very expensive place to live and do business.
Other Views
Fred2Blue objects to the inconvenience (see here). Please note the horses. Toll collection technology has advanced a bit since the horse and buggy era.
Tertium Quids wonders if the numbers will add up (see here).
BlueVirginia proves once again it does not like anything with a Republican label (see here).
well… here’s the deal. VDOT is basically broke in terms of being able to build new roads. They probably have enough to continue most maintenance.
so the question is where do new roads come from?
I see two paths.
Raise taxes statewide or tolls.
electronic tolls are easy …you put a transponder on your windshield and you’re good to go.
Statewide gas taxes besides being politically problematical… have a problem.. and that is that your money goes to Richmond where unelected folks can and are influenced to prioritize in ways that most folks might not agree with …because usually when that is done.. they essentially take taxes from one person to build a road for another person and they give the first person an IOU…
which, in effect, becomes the VDOT 6-year construction plan.
the only problem is that the list of IOUs has grown to 100 years worth.. and now that VDOT is out of money.. all those IOUs are worthless.
Raising the gas tax to continue that system is not a good thing IMHO.
and no.. I don’t buy the idea that we’ll put together a different system where the net affect won’t end up being exactly the same.
So I support the tolls. You pays your money and makes your choices…. it’s fair and it’s equitable…unlike statewide taxes for roads.
Larry G – Look carefully at what Speaker Howell and his cronies want to do. It is not just a matter of raising taxes statewide or tolls. I support tolls too, but Howell wants to lease our roads in public/private partnerships. This has a huge potential for corruption. Where are the checks and balances?
You have heard it said that “The Devil is in the details.” To keep our politicians honest, we must restrain our leaders and keep their schemes and government itself relatively simple.
Each of these public/private partnerships Howell proposes will involve a complex contract that will tie us up in knots. Because of the massive amount of funding involved only the big guys will be able to compete. So there is likely to be little competition. In addition, only those on the private end of the partnership will have the time it takes to understand how they taking the rest of us to the cleaners.
If you do support tolls but want them publically administered rather than private.. there is that option… the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel and the Powhite Parkways are state-operated.
But the Dulles Greenway and Tollroad and the Pocahantas Parkway are privately administered… if not mistaken because VDOT chose that path.
In fact, VDOT originally operated the Pocahantas Parkway and got into financial trouble and bailed out.
They also had the opportunity on the HOT Lanes and the Jordon Bridge in Suffolk to do them publically and they chose instead to solicit private bidders.
So.. don’t blame Mr. Howell.. VDOT is the one that went in this direction.. and I think Mr. Howell is supportive of private approaches but did not dictate them.
In other words.. I think he is “following” not “leading” on the privatization issue.
As far as I know.. not a single one of the NoVa representatives argued for the HOT Lanes to be publically operated and neither did Kaine.
Right?
I’m just saying.. let’s me fair about who shot John and all that rot.
full disclosure – I’m not a fan of Mr. Howell nor how his party conducts the affairs of the Commonwealth especially with the “no mo taxes” theme…
If you talk to states like New Jersey and Pennsylvania who do operate state-run toll systems.. they’ll talk about the rampant corruption and cronyism and nepotism that the bad guys use the toll systems as money machines.
Pennsylvania wanted to raise tolls on one road to pay for another. Maryland and Florida also do this.
they’ve set up state-wide toll authorities and they operate some toll roads at a loss and subsidize them by charing higher tolls on other roads where they an get away with doing that because of the demand.
and FYI – some of the tolls that are going to come from the HOT Lanes will be used to subsidize VRE and commuter buses and commuter parking lots…
Larry G – I don’t trust Howell because I have seen him back laws knowing they were unconstitutional. That violates his oath of office.
We funnel a huge amount of money into government. The government is not short of money. In fact we are not short of roads. What we do not have is a transportation system that is responsive to user demand. Why? Government gets our money whether we use the roads or not. The only time the politicians respond to user demand is when we get mad because of traffic jams. Meanwhile, the politicians scheme to spend our money for the benefit of well connected backers.
With tolls we have at least one advantage, we don’t pay for the road if we don’t use it. If we also restricted the spending of money collected from tolls to the projects from which the money was collected, we could largely get the greedy special interests out of the loop. That is not going to happen if we get public/private partnerships. Instead, we will be bailing out failing toll roads.
Pingback: THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP SCAM « Citizen Tom