The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Editorials

February 9, 2008

Our View: Roads need a state solution

The road funding debate in Minnesota isn’t about raising taxes. It’s about creating a sensible system where the right people are paying the right taxes. It’s also about accountability and good government.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been the enabler of a dysfunctional system that forces the wrong people to pay the wrong taxes, and allows those taxes to increase exorbitantly. His stewardship of the state’s infrastructure has been somewhere between neglectful and irresponsible.

His own “Department Results” report for the Minnesota Department of Transportation shows that in the six years the governor has been in office, MnDOT has never made its goal for the number of roads rated “good.” In fact, in 2000, 80 percent of Minnesota roads were rated good. MnDOT is hoping in 2007 that 70 percent will be rated good, saying that will meet the “goal.” The bar is lower, and we’re still not meeting it.

Pawlenty’s transportation policies have forced more and more of the cost for state roads onto county and city taxpayers. In Blue Earth County alone, taxpayers are paying five times as much for state aid highways in 2006 as they did in 2002. Drivers statewide no longer pay for state roads through the gas tax, as they should. Local taxpayers pay, subsidizing bad management by the governor.

The governor has painted himself into a corner with a pledge not to approve a gas tax increase that would create the tax fairness that existed just a few years ago. The Minnesota Chamber and numerous other organizations have supported a reasonable proposal to solve horrendous road problems with a 5-cent gas tax increase. This has also been a bipartisan proposal and included the governor’s idea of borrowing for roads by calling for another 2.5 cent gas tax to help pay for road bonds.

Democrats in the Senate and House are solidly on board with these proposals and have been for several years. Some Republicans also have backed the plan. Now, it is rural Republican legislators who again can, if they play their cards right, vote for the bill creating such a large majority the governor will not attempt to veto it.

It’s unfortunate that legislators have to lead where the governor should be leading.

But quickly passing the new bipartisan gas tax proposal will be the first step in a larger solution to solve a monumental problem in Minnesota road funding.

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