So how can Wisconsin fix the damn roads? We'll know more after Thursday

In a week of heavy lifting in the Joint Finance Committee, Thursday will likely feature the weightiest issue of them all – how to pay for transportation in Wisconsin for the next 2 years. Governor Tony Evers wanted to increase the state’s gas tax in his budget by 8 cents a gallon and then restoring indexing on the gas tax, which allows it to go up by the rate of inflation (this, and other funding options can be found in this paper from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau).

These moves would have raised $526.5 million for transportation in the 2019-21 budget, allowing Evers to increase road aids to local governments, add $320 million to state highway rehabilitation, and add $98 million in new interstate and major highway projects. This would be quite a turnaround from prior years, where the refusal of Republican legislators and Governor Walker to raise taxes or fees resulted in a drop in highway work around the state in this fiscal year.

For the 2019-21 budget cycle, GOP legislative leaders have continued to balk at the idea of increasing the gas tax to pay for the roads, so now Evers is in “wait and see’ mode.

Evers campaigned on raising the gas tax, saying it was the most reasonable and sustainable way to pay for roads in the state. Republicans in the Legislature, particularly in the Assembly, have been open to the idea of raising gas taxes in the past. The gas tax in Wisconsin hasn't increased since 2006, despite a road-funding shortage that's led to deteriorating conditions and delays in major projects across the state.

"Clearly the people of Wisconsin told us during the campaign to fix the damn roads," Evers told reporters at a news conference to announce a new effort to boost insurance enrollment. "Now, if Republican leadership has an idea how we can magically do that without increasing the gas tax, we'll certainly be looking for that. But it has to be a sustainable future around this issue of finding money to fix our damn roads."

Evers said he wanted to review the entire transportation funding plan, and the larger two-year budget, before deciding on what he will accept or reject. Evers has held out the possibility of vetoing the entire budget, a dramatic and highly unusual move that would almost certainly delay implementation of a budget well past the July 1 deadline.

Evers also has powerful partial veto powers, which allow him to make significant changes to the budget as passed by the Legislature without rejecting the entire $83 billion spending plan.

"Frankly, it's not soup yet either," Evers said of the budget. "So it's hard for me to respond to something when we don't know what the soup is."

So what might go into that soup? In the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s summary from Friday, it got GOP Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald on the record about what he thinks can happen.

Fitzgerald said GOP lawmakers were considering raising registration fees, title fees and heavy truck fees, but he didn’t say by how much. Tolling could also be an option, but it wouldn’t raise money right away because it would take time to implement, he said.

Fitzgerald cast doubt on proposals from some Republicans to put more money raised by income taxes and sales taxes toward transportation.

Assembly Speaker Robbin’ Vos also said in the article that there needed to be “new revenue for transportation”, but that a gas tax was unlikely. So fee increases it will be.

DOT Transportation Secretary Craig Thompson said he appreciated that GOP legislative leaders are admitting that there needs to be more money available for roads, although he continues to argue that the gas tax is the better way to get that money.

"It's encouraging we're talking about how to raise the money rather than whether to raise the money," Thompson said.

But he noted under the GOP plan Wisconsin wouldn't be collecting additional sums from out-of-state visitors, as it would under Evers' plan.

"The reason we put together the package the way we put ours is we thought it would be the most affordable and the fairest to everybody," Thompson said. "If you do it via the gas tax, we get everybody that's driving into the state that fills up to help pay for it. If we do it with registration fees, we're only charging Wisconsinites."

And that is a legitimate question to bring up – “Who do we want to pay for these road projects?”

Is it the trucking companies, whose vehicles beat up highways a lot more than everyday Wisconsinites in their cars? Is it tourists from Illinois filling up on their way to the Northwoods? Or should it all be paid by Wisconsinites, and should they pay the same fees regardless of whether they drive a 12-year-old Corolla (raises hand), a Prius, an SUV, or a new $60,000 sports car?

Of course, a lot of Wisconsinites have already seen a registration fee increase in recent years, due to local governments having to pass wheel taxes in recent years to fill the Scottholes that state government won’t help with. I’m now part of that group of people, as verified by my recent renewal notice.

A new statewide fee increase would go on top of the already-higher amount that many Wisconsinites have paid for their vehicles in the past few years. And let’s go back to that LFB paper to see how much of a fee increase we may be talking about, and how much money would come in for this budget as a result.

$10 increase in registration fee for cars, light trucks +$83.6 million
10% increase in heavy truck reg fees +$22.6 million
$20 increase in driver’s licenses +$22.1 million
$5 increase in title fee +$14.3 million

As you can see, you’d have to raise fees by a whole lot in order to come up with the $526 million Evers wants to add in gas taxes. So that indicates to me that the WisGOPs on Finance will either vote for a significant amount of cuts from Evers’ proposed roads budget, or they will have some kind of surprise scheme that moves a bunch of money in to the Transportation Fund at the expense of something else.

Lots of questions to be answered (at the committee level, anyway) in the next 36 hours, and a lot of Wisconsin Scottholes that need to be filled. Let’s see where it goes.

UPDATE - If the GOPs are going to seriously think a $10 registration fee increase does anything, the J-S's Patrick Marley puts it in proper perspective

Raising the registration fee by $10 a year would raise about an eighth as much as @GovEvers' plan to raise the gas tax by about 10 cents a gallon.

— Patrick Marley (@patrickdmarley) June 5, 2019