Let's Save Michigan

May 13, 2010

Michigan Lawmakers Continue to Play Games to Avoid Hard Decisions

Maybe you’ve heard it already but Michigan’s roads and transportaton system as a whole are about to get a lot worse. And yes that is possible.

But Lansing is failing to do anything serious about it.

Unless action is taken soon the state is in a position to lose out on nearly a half billion dollars in federal road funds because the state of Michigan simply doesn’t have enough road money to meet the federal requirements. What does a half billion in road funds represent? Hundreds of state highways projects across the state and more local road agencies letting roads deteriorate.

Instead of tackling this issue head on by generating new funds and enacting serious reforms the Legislature has done everything possible to avoid anything that would be politically inconvenient in an election year.

In what could best be described as a budget gimmick, yesterday the State Senate’s Appropriations Committee actually voted to cut funding for transit programs and passenger rail service, close Michigan Welcome Centers, cut projects designed to encourage companies to locate in MI, reduced snow plowing, eliminated highway mowing, and cut federally-mandated inspectors on road projects.

In doing so it hoped to redirect $84 million in transportation funds to road projects the Senate to keep the state eligible for the receive nearly $500 million in federal road funds, which we would lose otherwise.

The problem is that the $84 million pulls down other federal money that we will now lose and more importantly this does nothing to address the serious infrastructure issues facing our state. According to the Transportation Funding Task Force from last year determined that the state needed to add an additional $3 billion a year just to MAINTAIN our current infrastructure system.

The Senate’s move is at best a one-year band-aid to a much larger problem. As miserable as you may think or roads are right now they are actually the result an increase in investment over the past decade through bonds and federal stimulus plans and deficits. Gimmicks we can no longer count on.

Business leaders, transportation organizations and citizens who get this gathered in Lansing last week to decry the condition of Michigan’s woefully poor transportation system. Even truck drivers were in attendance and they were asking to be taxed to pay for better roads.

We all know Michigan’s roads and bridges are crumbling because of inadequate funding, but transportation is more than asphalt and concrete. It’s also public transit. Michigan has no significant public transit systems, where trains, buses, taxi cabs and personal automobiles work together to move people to and from work and play. By contrast, nearly every prosperous state and city in the nation has invested significant resources to develop real public transit systems.

Whether it is roads and bridges, or public transit, when a state invests in transportation, the result is the creation of thousands of jobs and significant economic activity. If you don’t believe me on this, visit Dallas, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, Charlotte and other cities in states that have invested in comprehensive transportation systems. They simply transform local economies.

And in our own state Michigan legislators have yet to implement the recommendations of the Transportation Funding Task Force created by Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Legislature in 2007. This group of Michigan government, business and transportation leaders worked for months at public meetings across the state and concluded in 2008 that “the consequences to Michigan if action is not taken to address the need for increased transportation investment are dire indeed” and that this inaction puts “more than 17,000 jobs at risk.”

In spite of this, lawmakers continue to ignore the need for a better transportation system and are okay with standing by while our current system decays.

If you aren’t okay with Michigan’s with putting off plans for better transit or simply allowing our current transportation system to further deteriorate before our eyes, contact your State Senator and tell them that robbing Paul to pay Peter, isn’t the bold leadership Michigan needs right now.