missouri Archives - Transportation For America

There’s a reason why Missouri voters twice rejected gas tax increases

Missouri spends more of its transportation budget on building new roads than maintaining its existing roads—23 percent of which are in poor condition. If it did a better job prioritizing maintenance, perhaps it wouldn’t need to ask taxpayers for a bailout.

A truck painting lane markings on a two-lane road in Missouri. Photo by MoDOT.

The state of Missouri gets over $1 billion a year from the federal government to support their highway needs. They match that with another $1.5 billion in state transportation funding for a total of $2.5 billion in spending a year.

This large sum is what they have to cover the maintenance and upkeep of 77,000 miles of roadway. At ~$24,000 a mile per year to keep a new road in good condition, that means the state has somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.85 billion in baseline maintenance needs for its existing system each year. Of those miles of roadway, 23 percent are in poor condition. (Their repair costs could be much higher: to restore bad roads to good condition costs more than the $24k per lane-mile figure for keeping new roads in good repair.)

The bottom line is that Missouri has a lot of built-in, predictable costs that they need to cover and a pretty deep well of existing transportation funding. But Missouri, along with 20 other states across the country, is actually spending more money on building new roads than on maintaining the ones they already have. According to their own reporting, Missouri is spending 31 percent of their federal funding on new roads while spending only 20 percent on repair of existing roadways. (Note that Missouri’s largest metropolitan area, St. Louis, is heralded for having the least traffic congestion in the country, which makes you wonder why the state feels the need to widen roads.)

After spending more money on expansion than repair, Missouri cries poverty and asks its taxpayers for more money. Perhaps it’s no surprise that voters have said no to them—twice. Should a bank loan you money to expand your deck while your roof is leaking?

Now the state is selling bonds to cover the cost of replacing rural bridges—an important investment. But one has to wonder, how many bridges and roads could they have already replaced with existing funds if those funds were prioritized to maintaining existing infrastructure before building the next shiny new highway or adding more lanes somewhere? At the very least, shouldn’t taxpayers expect as much money to go into highway maintenance as into expansion?

Unfortunately, neglecting repair while spending more money on building new roads is perfectly legal and permissible under the federal transportation program. Congress is just fine with Missouri neglecting needed repairs and increasing their overall need by adding more lanes, and as a result, Missouri is not alone.

This lack of accountability and clear priorities is why Missouri’s roads—and other roads, bridges, and transit systems in poor condition across the country—won’t be fixed by simply spending more money. In spite of unprecedented high levels of transportation funding, including from the Recovery Act, roadway conditions nationally have deteriorated over the last 10 years. Even if we double nationwide transportation spending, there is no guarantee that roads will improve in Missouri or elsewhere without a change to the underlying policies. This is why every conversation about transportation policy that begins and ends with money just isn’t good enough right now.

Missouri is fortunate to have powerful members of Congress that are uniquely positioned to change and improve policy. We can require states receiving federal money to maintain roads before building new ones. They could also require it of themselves.

Prioritizing repair is common sense. We cannot afford to waste any more time and money.

Read more about Missouri and 20 other states making the same mistake in our report Repair Priorities.

Mixed messages on transportation at the ballot box this week

With a range of notable ballot measures for transportation considered by voters Tuesday, how did the issue fare at the ballot box? Did the recent trends for transportation-related measures continue?

Compared with two years ago when there were a number of major, big-ticket ballot measures to raise billions in new local revenue for transit on the ballot, there were relatively few local ballot measures raising new money for ambitious bus or rail transit projects in 2018. We’ll get into what actually happened at the local level, but this year, one of the more interesting trends emerged at the state level.

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T4America members: We’ve produced a more detailed post-election analysis for you. You can download that short document here. Reach out to us if you have any questions.

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Statewide

The biggest question on the ballot was Proposition 6 in California, which would have undone the state’s 2017 legislation that increased fuel taxes to raise more than $50 billion to prioritize repair and pledge billions toward transit, safe streets for walking and biking, and an overall multimodal approach to solving the state’s transportation challenges. The legislation also gave money directly to California localities to spend on their greatest needs, allowing for a strong measure of local control.

Proposition 6 was defeated—preserving 2017’s tax increase—with just 45 percent in favor. Of all the states that have raised new transportation revenues since 2012, California was one of the few that raised new money that could be used on a diverse range of needs. Voters just signaled their approval for this approach a year later.

By contrast, statewide proposals to raise new revenues for transportation—almost all for only roads—failed in Missouri and Colorado, as well as a non-binding advisory measure in Utah that went down by a wide margin. While a portion of Colorado’s gas tax dollars (those directed to localities) can be used on any transportation purpose, both Missouri and Utah have constitutional prohibitions on 100% of their gas tax dollars, preventing them from being spent on any other transportation needs.

What’s the trend to extrapolate from these four measures? The latter three measures were essentially status quo referenda on whether or not voters want to put more money into the existing state system for transportation. The taxpayers resoundingly answered “no.” In Missouri’s case, this was their second run at raising state fuel taxes for only roads, and like in 2014, voters in the state’s metro areas widely rejected the measure, viewing the taxes as regressive and a way to funnel money out of their metro area to pay for needs elsewhere in the state. All three contrast with California’s new system to devote new taxes toward a range of multimodal projects that was reaffirmed by voters.

This will be the most pressing question of 2019 as Congress ramps up to work on reauthorization. Do the American taxpayers believe that the federal transportation system works for them? Will they be supportive of federal legislators raising their taxes or creating new revenues to put into the same old system?

Local

At the local level, there were notable measures approved in Broward County (north of Miami) and Hillsborough County (Tampa). Broward’s penny sales tax increase would raise $15.6 billion over 30 years, largely for transit with about $9 billion earmarked for new light rail lines. In Tampa’s case, after a few failed attempts, they finally passed a measure with money for transit that raises the sales tax by a penny to raise about $275 million annually for transportation. (Revenues are split 45/55 between transit and roads/other projects.)

Federal

Many want to know how the changeover in House leadership will impact transportation, and particularly transit funding. It’s worth noting, however, that it’s been a bipartisan effort in Congress to press on USDOT to keep these transit projects moving. It was a Republican House and Senate that approved an unprecedented provision to the 2018 appropriations bill requiring USDOT to obligate all of their 2018 transit capital grants before the end of 2019. And it was a Republican move in the Senate to require Trump’s USDOT to use President Obama’s TIGER grant qualifications for the last round of TIGER grants.

Will much else change with the House’s leadership transition? The top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee—the committee charged with writing policy for the 2020 reauthorization—went on the record today saying that federal transportation policy is just fine as it is. All we need is more money.

No notable reforms for 2020 fed reauthorization in wake of House flip? “We don’t need much more policy changes. We have pretty good policy in the FAST Act. It’s just inadequate funding,” @RepPeterDeFazio told Bloomberg.

— Transport. 4 America (@T4America) November 7, 2018

We’ll have more on the federal angle in the coming days. View our tracker for 2018 state and local ballot measures for transportation here.

Helping governors save money and attract talent through a fresh approach to transportation

A new guide released today by Transportation for America shows governors and their administration how a fresh approach to transportation is fundamental to creating quality jobs and shared prosperity while running an efficient government that gets the greatest benefit from every taxpayer dollar.

With new governors set to take office in the new year and scores of incumbents returning and setting their agendas for 2017, it’s crucial that they consider how transportation can be a valuable tool for achieving their policy goals — whether producing savings in the budget, attracting and creating jobs, giving taxpayers greater benefit for each dollar, or building healthy and safe communities.

Transportation failures — whether excessive time that people or freight are stuck in traffic, decreasing air quality, flawed implementation of mega-projects, or the perceived and real inefficiencies of government bureaucracy — are a drag on the economy and quality of life for residents.

Many state departments of transportation just aren’t well calibrated to solve today’s challenges. Planning is isolated from development and other infrastructure decisions, state programs have a narrow focus on building highways to the exclusion of building unified, holistic systems, and the most efficient solutions are often overlooked in favor of overbuilt or ill-conceived mega-projects.

And above all, the recipe for successful local and regional economic development has changed significantly.

In the past, economic development was focused on recruiting and luring large employers and expecting new workers to follow the jobs. But younger workers are choosing where to live and then looking for jobs. Economic development now depends on building great places that draw and anchor talent. Quality of life, vibrant communities, and transportation choices are no longer simply nice add-ons, they are essential to economic growth and prosperity in communities large and small. And employers are making the same shift to stay competitive, seeking communities with these features precisely because they attract talented workers.

Yet the transportation policies and bureaucratic practices in so many states often fail to provide the infrastructure that helps build these kinds of places that businesses are now flocking too. Instead, many state agencies are continuing to offer transportation strategies more suited to solving yesterday’s problems. State policymakers need to change the focus of transportation spending in order to realize the full potential from these investments.

This new guide offers best practices to help state leaders achieve greater benefits and avoid costly pitfalls in their transportation programs, including several examples of states solving problems by instituting reforms within their transportation programs.

Virginia developed a new system to pick projects based on benefits and better communicate the benefits of each state investment.
Tennessee saved millions of dollars by right-sizing and reconsidering projects that had long been in their pipeline. One $65 million project became a $340,000 project, with nearly the same benefits.
Colorado built a new, multimodal corridor with tolled lanes and bus rapid transit to provide commute options.
California has launched a new, all-electric car share program in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

As new governors begin their terms and new legislatures are seated, it is a critical time to evaluate state transportation spending and how we can get greater benefits from these programs. The examples in this guide from around the country show how governors, administrations, and state DOTs have solved problems by reforming policies and practices. Download it today.

We can help states achieve these changes through tailored technical assistance and through START network policy support. Find out more and join this network today.

How many states will try to do something different in 2016?

With Congress finally wrapping up their five-year transportation bill in late 2015, the spotlight will burn even brighter on states in 2016. With 40 state legislatures now in session and six more set to begin in the coming weeks, how many states will raise new funding? How many states will attempt to improve how they spend their transportation dollars? How many will take unfortunate steps backwards?

As we highlighted in our most recent report that contained 12 recommendations for bringing state transportation policy out of the stone age, these state legislators will face the most critical of choices: continue pumping scarce dollars into a complex and opaque system designed to spend funds based more on politics than needs, or find a new approach that will boost state and local economies and restore taxpayer confidence in a broken system.

Here’s a short roundup of some of the states and bills that we’ll be watching.

Increases in funding on the horizon?

Louisiana’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), and a new legislature have highlighted transportation as a priority issue. Edwards’ transition team recommended a big ramp up in spending for transportation projects — and especially on rail, transit, freight and other key, non-highway projects that have long been neglected. The transition team also recommended that — to make those projects possible — the state will need to move ahead on staffing and setting up the new office of multimodal commerce created by the legislature in 2014 as a way to reform the Department of Transportation and Development and broaden the state’s transportation focus. A special legislative session on the state budget begins in mid-February. Transportation is unlikely to be included in this session, but legislators will be laying the groundwork for raising new funding in a later session or next year.

Following years of unsuccessful efforts, Missouri’s legislature is again looking for ways to raise new state revenue for transportation. A voter initiative in 2014 was defeated in part because it would have taxed metropolitan areas most heavily but not given cities the autonomy to spend these funds on their most pressing transportation needs. To get support for new funding — several bills have been introduced already this year — legislators will likely need to reform the way funds are distributed and spent, but few reforms have been offered.

A special transportation finance panel called by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D) recommended multiple sources of financing to fund the state’s long list of repair needs and planned projects. But it called for the state to first implement several reforms, including setting aside fuel tax and toll revenues exclusively for transportation projects and for enabling new local or regional funding options to allow alternative funding for local priorities.

Colorado’s legislature is fielding a slew of calls for new ways to get more money to transportation projects. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has called for a tax swap that would allow the state to spend existing revenue on transportation projects. Some transportation advocates have called for general obligation bonds, shifting money now used for road repair to pay for new projects, or a statewide ballot measure to increase revenue for transportation.

After months of publicly calling for state legislators to boost state transportation funding and barnstorming the state to make his case, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has pushed the issue off the agenda until 2017. The call for new revenue got a chilly reception with state legislators, including leaders in Haslam’s own party. Fortunately, as we highlight in our report from two weeks ago, Tennessee’s DOT is already a leader in finding cost-effective solutions and saving state money by right-sizing their projects — keys to building trust and ensuring voters that any new money down the road will be well-spent.

New local funding

Local communities want and need to put their own skin in the game, and states should enable them to do so. Far too many states restrict the ability for locals to tax themselves to raise their own funds for transportation, but scores of other states are looking for ways to enable local communities to raise their own dollars for their most pressing needs.

A bill was introduced in Massachusetts by START Network member Rep. Chris Walsh (D-Framingham) to allow cities and towns to impose a payroll, sales, property, or vehicle excise tax to fund local transportation projects, including repair and new construction of streets, bridges, transit, and pedestrian or bike infrastructure. A bill in Wisconsin allows counties or municipalities to impose a temporary, 0.5-percent sales tax to raise money exclusively for street and highway repair. Both bills would require the new taxes to be approved by the local government and a voter referendum.

A 2013 transportation funding bill in Virginia added extra fuel and sales taxes for the state’s most populous urban regions of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to help them meet the large, complicated transportation demands. Two bills introduced this year add a new floor to the local supplemental tax equal to the amount that would have been charged in February 2013, already in place for the statewide wholesale rate, and increase the wholesale rate for the Hampton Roads region from 2.1-percent to 5.3-percent.

Measuring performance

Last month, Virginia Department of Transportation released its first list of projects scored and ranked to receive funding in the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program. This program is the result of a dogged focus by legislative leaders and the administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to reform the state’s transportation program. START members and other local leaders have had positive feedback thus far for the new system intended to increase transparency and public understanding of transportation investments by objectively screening and scoring transportation projects based on their anticipated benefits.

Massachusetts is in the midst of implementing a similar program that was created as part of the 2013 transportation funding package.

Moving backward

While legislators in many states are looking for ways to meet diverse transportation needs, some legislators are leading efforts to entrench systems that fund highways only. A bill passed out of Colorado’s Senate Transportation committee would eliminate $15 million in state money directed to transit from a 2009 funding bill. A bill in Tennessee would limit state transportation funds, including those distributed to cities and counties, exclusively for highways and bridges.

As many states close out their legislative sessions, the latest intel on state transportation funding

As we near the midpoint of the year and some state legislatures wrap up their sessions or approach recess, it’s a good time to take a look at where a few states stand on their efforts to raise new transportation funding.

In the only state to raise new money since our last update, Nebraska’s legislature passed and then overrode Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto (30-16) of a 6-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase, to be phased in over the next four years. The additional tax will annually bring in $25 million for state roads and $51 million to be distributed to cities and counties when fully implemented.

Follow state transportation funding updates for every state as they happen with T4America’s state funding tracker.

A handful of states have been searching for ways to improve transparency and accountability as a first step to raising new funding. In Louisiana, the House and Senate unanimously passed a bill in May that reforms the way the state DOT prioritizes and selects highway projects in an effort to provide greater transparency to the process. This strong piece of legislation was introduced and advanced by a member of T4A’s state advocacy network (START), House Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger.

(We hope to go into more detail soon on this trend of states either reforming their project selection process or expanding the use of performance measures, so stay tuned for that. -Ed.)

Additional bills that would raise gas and general sales taxes to fund transportation projects have cleared committee, though a bill to raise the state sales tax by one cent to fund major projects just fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed to pass the House last week.

Some other states are still active in their legislative sessions with transportation funding proposals on the docket, while a handful of others have failed to pass a package during this session.

California’s Senate is considering a bill that would hike the state gas tax by 10-cents-per-gallon (and the diesel tax by 12-cents-per-gallon), increase the vehicle tax to 1 percent of the value of the vehicle, increase registration fees by $35, and add a new $100 annual fee on electric vehicles.

Projections show the bill would bring in more than $4 billion annually. The bill has been cleared out of multiple senate committees. It requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass.

Just a year after Texas voters overwhelmingly approved a separate measure to set aside a portion of oil and gas royalties explicitly for highways, legislators in Texas have reached a deal that will direct a greater share of future state sales tax revenue to transportation. Specifically, $2.5 billion of the state sales tax revenue will be reserved for transportation, so long as overall sales tax receipts are at least $28 billion (approximately the collections this year). Additionally, 35% of revenue growth from taxes on vehicle sales and rentals will be set aside for transportation beginning in 2020, netting $250 million to $350 million annually.

The House and Senate have both passed the bill, and now it will need approval from Texas voters in November.

In Delaware, Gov. Markell is urging legislators to pass a $25 million annual increase in transportation funding through increased vehicle fees.

Minnesota’s legislature adjourned without reaching an agreement on how to increase funding for transportation and passed a status-quo budget instead. But with a special legislative session looming, there’s a possibility that legislators will have another opportunity to reach an agreement on new funding.

Similarly, Missouri failed to pass a transportation funding measure. The legislature had debated a 2-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase, but adjourned without passing the measure. According to that state’s DOT, legislators must come up with new state funding in their next session or the state will not have adequate money to match federal transportation dollars, leaving federal money on the table.

In Oregon, legislative negotiations over new transportation funding seem to have ground to a halt.

But Oregon is on the leading edge of testing a new mechanism for funding transportation that could serve as a model for the rest of the country, shifting away from a per-gallon tax to a tax on miles traveled. This month the state started enrolling 5,000 drivers into its new (voluntary for now) road usage charge program called OReGO. The new road usage charge program officially began Tuesday.

Michigan ballot measure to raise transportation & education funds goes down by a large margin

A Michigan bill that would have raised new money and overhauled how the state pays for transportation was defeated by huge margin Tuesday with 80 percent of voters rejecting the complicated proposal.

The bill would have eliminated the state’s fuel sales tax and raised the tax on wholesale gasoline sales to 41.7 cents per gallon (or 14.9 percent of a gallon of fuel’s base value, whichever is higher). This maneuver would have ensured that the entirety of the wholesale gas tax would have gone to transportation, compared to the current gas sales which does not.

To compensate for the loss of gasoline sales tax revenues currently going to municipalities and schools, the bill increased the sales tax on everything else statewide from six to seven percent and allocated the additional revenues to schools, local municipalities, and a tax break for low-income families.

The proposal would have also increased vehicle registration fees, commercial truck registration fees and would have instated a fee on electric vehicles.

While certainly disappointing to the supporters in Michigan, it reinforces the same lesson we’ve shared here regularly: transportation-related ballot measures have the best chance of passage when they are simple, specific and transparent about the money that will be raised and exactly where and how it will be spent. Voters have proven over and over again that they’ll support transportation ballot measures — if they meet some of those basic qualifications. Michigan’s measure surely suffered from the complexity and from the combination of education and transportation funding together into one proposal.

Some of the states still in play in 2015

Though there have been no new statewide funding packages passed since our last update here, other states are trying to bring transparency to the process of selecting transportation projects. Texas’s HB 20 tasks the TxDOT with creating “a performance-based planning and programming process” that would evaluate which transportation projects receive state money. Similarly, Louisiana’s HB 742 would require the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development to rank projects according to a series of measures that highlight which projects are most vital to the state.

Also in Louisiana, the House’s tax committee approved two funding bills. The first would raise the state’s sales tax by one cent, with the proceeds going towards 16 designated transportation projects. The second bill would increase the gas tax ten cents, from 20 cents per gallon to 30.

The Missouri Senate gave initial approval to a 1.5-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase (3.5 cents per gallon for diesel). The state’s gas tax has been 17.3 cents per gallon since 1992. The bill stills needs one more vote in the Senate before going to the House. There are only two weeks left in the state’s legislative session and it is unclear whether they will vote on the bill before then.

In Minnesota, where we recently documented the state’s prevalence of structurally deficient bridges, both the House and the Senate have passed transportation-funding bills, but the two differ greatly. The Senate proposal raises new funds via a gas tax increase and a Twin Cities regional sales tax increase. The House’s version mostly shifts dollars around or borrows funds for transportation. The issue has been pushed aside as legislators must also hash out a state budget before the May 18^th deadline.