Vos, "small government' WisGOPs whine that they don't get more highway pork

Last week, Governor Evers announced $75 million in additional state funding to help pay for 152 new transportation projects throughout Wisconsin. Assemnbly Speaker Robbin' Vos used the occasion to sneer at Evers for....not spending more?

“Governor Evers is shortchanging our local roads. Legislative Republicans created this $90 million program for local road repairs; the governor cut it by $15 million and opened up the program to all types of projects.

“It’s disappointing that 100 percent of the money isn’t going to local roads as intended. Instead, millions of dollars are being diverted to bike paths and buses with fewer dollars available to help crumbling roads.”

So what is Vos talking about? Here's how the Legislative Fiscal Bureau described the original plan by the GOP Legislature.

Provide $90,000,000 GPR in 2019-20 to a newly-created GPR appropriation that would be used to fund local government project costs that would be eligible for program funding under the current law the local roads improvement program discretionary component, to be allocated as follows: (a) $32,003,200 for county projects; (b) $22,847,400 for municipalities; and (c) and $35,149,400 for towns. Specify that notwithstanding local road improvement program cost-sharing requirements, that a required local project cost match of 10% of total project cost would apply to project submitted for funding under the GPR appropriation. Require DOT to solicit project applications for this funding, beginning in 2019-20, until the funds appropriated have been expended. Provide DOT the authority to promulgate administrative rules for this purpose. Because the funding would be provided in 2019-20, there would be no ongoing base level funding for this supplemental program component.

Note the "GPR", which means this program uses everyday tax dollars instead of the Transportation Fund, which uses items such as the gas tax and registration fees.

Once the budget reached Evers' desk, he changed the program with his veto pen in a variety of ways.

1. Reduced it from $90 million to $75 million.
2. Got rid of the geographic restrictions on where the projects would go, and expanded which type of projects could be funded.
3. Took some pressure off of the local governments by removing the 10% match requirement.

So now let's look at the projects that were funded, and see how different those totals were compared to the GOP Legislature's original bill.

It looks like what got Robbin's ire is that Evers' DOT dared to pay a portion of these dollars toward bicycle/pedestrian improvements for certain street projects, as well as some bridge projects. Ironically, most of these multi-modal and bridge projects are in smaller towns and communities, but Vos and the rest of WisGOP didn't bring up that fact.

Oh, and there was $1 million given to the Milwaukee County Transit System for uses, which will buy...2 of them? What an absolute horror that we spent 1.33% of this program for that!

It's remarkable to see Republicans complain about not spending enough money for roads, because the reason the state's roads are "crumbling" is because WisGOP allowed Scott Walker to pull the double-whammy of cutting road spending and increasing borrowing for several years. All to allow Walker to strike a "no tax, no fee" pose for DC oligarchs like Grover Norquist instead of improving the state's infrastructure.

To go further, after WisDOT received over $1 billion in requests for this new program, did WisGOP propose using some of the state's one-time surplus to do another round of grants? OF COURSE NOT! Instead they tried to cut property taxes for businesses (and raising them for homeowners) and income taxes for some Wisconsinites, which Evers rightfully vetoed.

But when have Republicans ever debated honestly in the last decade? And Robbin' Vos is the last guy who should be complaining about a lack of funds going to GOP districts, given that we borrowed $252 million to upgrade the Interstate near the (still-tiny) Foxconn project, which just so happens to be in Vos' district, and will pay $408 million once you include the debt costs. In addition, Scott Walker's DOT sent another $134 million to upgrade the local roads around that white elephant, while taking that money away from other parts of the state.

So I don't really need to see WisGOPs shed crocodile tears about an alleged lack of spending on roads from Tony Evers, especially since they said nothing as Scott Walker allowed the roads to fall apart. It's especially rich to see these "small-government conservatives" complain when the complaint is that not enough pork is being funneled to their parts of the state.