The Arizona Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a transportation measure could not be placed on the ballot this November. The measure would have increased sales taxes by a penny to raise billions of dollars for roads and transit.
Contrary to what some people might think, the Antiplanner would have opposed this measure even if all of the funds were dedicated to roads. Transportation facilities should be built using user fees, not taxes.
This point is made in an analysis of the measure by the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, John Semmens. “A sales tax for transportation purposes is both inefficient and inequitable,” he says. It is inequitable, of course, because some people pay the costs while others get the benefits. It is also inefficient, Semmens says, because by subsidizing travel it undermines efforts to relieve congestion.
Browse online and see which articles have five star ratings and reflect on these articles as this will show you how to get viagra generic discount and maintain a hard erection naturally mystery. It is obvious that you will gain harder and bigger erections for enjoying viagra cheapest enhanced sexual pleasure with your beautiful female. Accumulation of such substances in those parts of the body that are not intended for the treatment of weak erection, weakness in the male organ, low libido and male impotence. best cialis prices It is necessary to see a doctor in case you return the products you have ordered in an unopened cheapest cialis online and unused condition. But what really bothers Semmens is that the measure is essentially one big fat pork barrel. There are no real performance standards, and much of the money will be spent by a committee appointed by the governor. What Semmens does not make explicit is that it is a lot easier to turn transportation taxes into pork than user fees.
Funding transportation out of user fees exerts a discipline that is absent when transportation is funded out of taxes. If you don’t build the transportation facilities that people want, you won’t get the user fees you need to cover their costs. But taxes roll in no matter how much you waste them, so you don’t need to worry about cost effectiveness or performance standards.
Unfortunately, when this much pork is involved — the measure was estimated to bring in more than $40 billion — lots of powerful interests that want a share of the pork will put up money to get it. When proponents of such measures have millions of dollars to spend promoting them and opponents have practically nothing, the Antiplanner quite frankly doesn’t trust the ballot box to produce the right decision. To be truly successful, a democracy needs checks and balances to insure that it is not hijacked by special interests enriching themselves by persuading the public to increase taxes for specious and unnecessary projects.
So Arizona should count itself lucky that this measure did not make it to the ballot. In fact, it was more than luck but the hard work of a number of groups, particularly the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, to keep it off. If you live in the Phoenix area, I understand a party will be held this Friday to celebrate the decision.
Champion cyclist Lance Armstrong tops a list of heavy water users in a city trying hard to conserve while meeting rising demand during a drought and steady or rapid population growth.
A total of 222,900 gallons of water was used at Armstrong’s home, according to the most recent city records available. That’s about what 26 average Austin households use in a month.
Ahhh, freedom.
True, but does it actually matter? I haven’t seen a government-operated toll road yet that made a real honest cut in its budget. What they tend to do is allow their operating budget to grow without bound, and when their inability to fund capital replacements becomes obvious they run crying to the legislature.
Excellent. Randal and I agree.
DS
Antiplanner wrote:
“Transportation facilities should be built using user fees, not taxes.”
That’s okay where a new facility is being provided, for example new express lanes on a freeway – for all kinds of reasons, it may be better to charge them to use the new and improved facility. Apart from anything else, it means that there is no hit on the public purse, since the road can be funded and managed by a private company. It also enables the use of the new facility to be managed, e.g. to stop the express lane from becoming congested.
It’s a bit dodgy when it is used to decide if there are enough user fees to justify doing something. In 1865, most people in the UK got around by train. The roads, shorn of their tolls, had decayed away. Users of the new mechanised road transport wanted new roads, and were told that there was no money, as obviously the future was trains. Not enough user fees. Hence, the ‘Red Flag Act’ of 1865. A vehicle (tractor or car) required four engineers, of whom three had to ride on the vehicle, and the fourth had to walk no more than 100m in front, holding a red flag. 2mph speed limit in town, 4mph out of town. Reasonable?
It doesn’t work, though, for exising facilities, in particular the maintenance of them. People don’t like paying for things that they’ve always used for free (as Antiplanner himself pointed out recently). That’s why congestion charging (London, New York) is a non-starter. Particularly when it looks like a barely concealed effort to bully people into doing something that they don’t want to do.
It doesn’t work, though, for exising facilities, in particular the maintenance of them. People don’t like paying for things that they’ve always used for “free” [quotation marks added]
This is why the infrastructure in the US is crumbing. A generation of debunked NeoCon economics (tax cutcutCUT!) has drained the coffers and there is little money for maintenance. No one bothered to figure out how to raise the money for maintenance (on purpose? Stupidity? Blind adherence to ideology? Does it matter now?) and now everyone is paying for it, some with their lives (e.g. Minneapolis).
Most are paying for it with wear and tear on their automobiles, electrical grid glitches, sewer degradation.
DS
Sorry, but you let the genie out of the bottle.