WisDOT admits it- less spending + less revenue = bad things for roads

I was wondering why our Fair Governor was lying his ass off about the Zoo Interchange project in a stupid photo op yesterday. Naturally, it was because Scott Walker's weakness on road funding was about to be exposed in a big way, as Katelyn Ferral wrote in the Capitol Times about a report from the Wisconsin DOT detailing its recent history of (dis)investment.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation reports that total funding across all state transportation programs has fallen since Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011, despite statements Walker has made insisting he has made historic investments.

According to a DOT report on 2018-2019 budget trends released last week, spending has fallen across every road program, including major highway development, local road aid and assistance and southeast Wisconsin freeways, which saw the most dramatic decline.

Dem Assembly Leader Gordon Hintz gave the most damning changes under Wisconsin GOP rule.

Since @GovWalker took office:

⬇️Funding for major highway development decreased by 31.2%
⬇️Highway improvement funding fell by 23.8%
⬇️Local road funding fell by 13.4%
⬆️Debt service on transportation borrowing has increased by 66.9%https://t.co/C9Psaxi2rD

— Gordon Hintz (@GordonHintz) August 29, 2018

In addition, Ferral's article noted that the Walker Administration's refusal to honestly look at how to pay for the roads is a big reason why these cuts and deterioration have occurred.

Even with an increase for local roads in Walker's latest budget, the DOT's report shows that the administration has "kicked the can down the road" on a long-term transportation funding solution, said Dan Fedderly, executive director of the Wisconsin County Highway Association, who has worked on local transportation issues for more than 30 years.

"There's no question, and I said it multiple times ... in relationship to transportation funding at the local level you don't have to look at the reports. It isn't a complicated issue. You just have to be out in the field looking at what's happening," Fedderly said. "The funding at the local level has not kept pace with the demand and needs of the local system by any stretch."

"You don't solve a transportation dilemma that you created over multiple years in one budget cycle ... the whole discussion sums up the failure of the Legislature and the administration to address a long-term sustainable funding source for transportation in Wisconsin," he said.

Let’s jump off there and look at how the DOT is funded, and why we’re in the mess that we’re in. And let's dig into the DOT’s Transportation Budget Trends report, starting with this chart, with the numbers adjusted for inflation.



You can see that registration fees have risen as a bigger part of the DOT funding pie, and more than made up for that loss of gas tax revenues between 2005-2011. But that hasn’t been the case during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, and other sources have had to be tapped to keep up.

Here’s another way of looking at that mix of funding streams. As inflection points, I’ll use the registration fee increases of 2004-05 and 2008-09, the ending of gas tax indexing in 2005, the 2011 takeover of state government by Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP, and a one-time bump in 2015 of $213 million transferred from the General Fund and other sources of money.

All of this is adjusted for inflation.



Despite relying a bit more in recent years on "other” sources in recent years (at the expense of other areas funded by general taxes, like schools and health services), over 89% of state funding for the DOT is from gas taxes and registration fees.

On the spending side, you can see that total funds for WisDOT are slated to be nearly $200 million less in the 2018-19 Fiscal Year than it was when Walker took over in 2011. By comparison, DOT expenses rose by nearly 48% during Jim Doyle’s tenure from 2003-2011 (so stick that RW “Doyle raid” talking point up your ass). However, the increasingly scarce gas tax and registration dollars are paying for more of the DOT’s budget, as Walker reacted to criticism for increased highway debt costs by cutting back on bond funds over the last 3 years.



When adjusted for inflation, the differences are even more stark, as the Doyle years had real DOT increases of $686 million, while it has dropped by $661 million under Walker. The inflation-adjustment also shows that despite the Paul Ryan’s GOP controlling the House since 2011, WisDOT’s federal funding has dropped by a little less than $94 million, making the squeeze even worse.



And finally here’s the chart for the key breakdown that Ferral’s article discussed – the DOT budget by category. Note the $448.6 decline in state highway spending between 2014 and 2019 while the costs to pay off debt increase by more than $44 million.



When you adjust for inflation, you really see where the highway spending cuts in 2015 and (especially) 2017 and 2019 along with local aids cuts of more than $80 million between 2011 and 2017 led to so many Scottholes in recent years.



So the question becomes “What’s gotta change?”, assuming we aren’t getting a huge bailout from DC (is it “Infrastructure Week” in TrumpWorld again, by the way?).

First, we need to get more revenue into the Transportation Fund, as the current amount of funding just isn't enough. And given that real gas taxes have steadily declined over the last 14 years, that area seems like an obvious place to start. But I’d put a different spin on a gas tax increase, where the it would rise on a sliding scale starting on May 15 (say 5 cents), jumping again around July 1 (like by 15 cents), staying there through September 15, when it goes back to a 5 cent increase, and then it declines back to its present 30.9 cents-per-gallon on October 15. This puts more of the burdens onto FIBs tourists that use more of the state’s roads in the Summer, and lessens the tax increase on people who live here and rely on the roads every day.

I’d also borrow an idea that GOP State Rep. Amy Loudenbeck suggested during last year’s budget stalemate, and put on a mileage-based registration fee on heavy trucks, which she said would raise $138 million a year. That idea was beaten back after lobbying from Schneider National and other GOP trucking donors last year, but I’d tell those businesses that paying a little extra is a lot better than having to pay for more truck repairs and the lost work hours and productivity that results from Scotthole damage.

And there’s a third piece of the equation that often gets left out when we talk about how to pay for streets - stop handcuffing local governments. This means more shared revenue sent to those communities (whether through the General Fund or the Transportation Fund), and/or loosening up the restrictions on localities raising their own revenue, especially through sales taxes. A local sales tax for roads has been floated several times in recent years by members of both parties, but Walker and WisGOP leadership have caved to the “no-tax increase” orders given to them by the Kochs and other puppetmasters, and so it hasn't happened.


Or just use the state plane

Which means that if we want to solve the DOT’s funding woes, it’s going to take new leaders in both the Governor’s Office, and in the Legislature. The current crew has shown repeatedly in recent years that they’re too bought off to do the right thing, so as usual, it’s going to have to fall to Dems to clean up a mess caused by reckless Republicans.