The road game
I feel that we should keep our roads in reasonably good condition and pay for the cost of doing that.
The problem is, there is a gas tax and highway tolls collected for this purpose. Does the amount EXPENDED FOR roads EQUAL the amount COLLECTED FOR roads by the gas tax and tolls? If not, then more money should be allocated for roads out of the general funds. When the road spending = gas tax + toll revenue and, after several years at that spending level, the roads still need more work THEN up the gas tax.
As far as I know, all the taxes are tossed into the general fund and income that was "for roads" becomes available for politicians pet projects. Road spending gets shorted. Since poor roads and unsafe bridges are a leverage issue, i.e. the public will respond to them, the politicians and dopey media will moan about the poor conditions of "infrastructure", not telling you that they pull millions from "road income" into other projects. They know you won't broadly support funding these other projects so they make it about "the roads". You agree to a 10 cent gas tax increase and 4 cents of it still ends up going to other stuff and the roads never seem to get fixed.
I will admit that I don't know the actual numbers but I would bet that I am correct.
It's a great racket for the politicians
|