MDOT Has a $1.2 billion dollar budget, two-thirds of that federal money, but it’s not enough.
Most of the state money comes from the gas tax. Only Alaska has a lower gas tax than Mississippi. That’s the problem. The gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1989, 35 years ago. What a dollar would buy in 1989 would take $2.55 today.
This has created problems for Brad White, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT).
White has been involved in Mississippi Republican Party politics for most of his career. He was chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party when Haley Barbour was governor. He has been chief of staff for State Auditor Stacey Pickering, Governor Tate Reeves, and U. S. Senators Thad Cochran and Cindy Hyde-Smith. He even worked for Governor Fordice’s campaign as a youngster. This guy bleeds Mississippi Republican party.
Which puts White in a tough position. Mississippi Republicans love to cut taxes but White needs more state money — a lot more, $400 million more a year.
There are several main reasons: 1) Roads and bridges are a fundamental part of government infrastructure and Mississippians expect decent roads and highways; 2) The Federal Highway Department has national standards and if MDOT doesn’t meet them, they withdraw funding (or take over state transportation like the Jackson water); 3) The federal match on capacity projects is 80 to 90 percent. So if the state doesn’t come up with its share, it leaves billions of dollars of federal money on the table, hurting the future of the state.
So what’s a good tax-cutting Republican to do?
Here we have a fundamental problem with democracy: Voters and politicians. Politicians want to get elected so they have to make voters happy. Republican voters hate taxes, so the state legislators won’t raise the gas tax.
The Democratic Party has a similar problem in reverse. Their base loves taxes and government spending. But if the politicians spend too much, government goes broke.
Nobody said running a country of 330 million or a state of three million people was easy. It’s a work in progress.
Being raised in the political arena, White was careful about his words last week at the Stennis Press Forum at Hal & Mal’s in Jackson. He put it this way:
“I see this cliff coming. This year thanks to one-time federal dollars, this year we’re making it ok . . . but you can read the tea leaves if you will and see what’s coming.
“In the past, this is just my opinion, every time there’s been a conversation about funding for infrastructure, MDOT and the industry would step up and ask for an adjustment to the fuel tax because that’s the way it’s always been funded. But I think there’s a lot of problems with that. There’s not many politicians over there that’s interested in raising taxes, from a practical standpoint. But we understand that the fuel tax revenue is not going to be sustainable. One cent of fuel tax revenue in Mississippi would raise about $23 million dollars. When you look at the paving backlog we have, you’re talking about a $400 million deficit that we’re running in paving alone. I don’t think you could raise the fuel tax up enough to make up for that so I do believe the first thing to do is start looking at a more diversified approach.”
Since I’m a journalist and not a political official, I can rephrase White thusly: The legislators are afraid of getting booted out if they raise the gas tax, so they just kick the can down the road as our roads and highways crumble and new capacity projects — projects that would be 90 percent funded by the feds — die on the vine.
The last year or two was a brief reprieve thanks to one-time federal money.
After years of falling behind, Senator Roger Wicker was able to get an extra billion dollars of federal money. This allowed MDOT to start looking at future projects to improve transportation efficiency. For the first time in a long time, MDOT was not just maintaining, but planning for the future again. But then inflation hit and MDOT was right back where they started, having to spend all the money on maintenance and none on new projects to increase capacity.
Now disaster is looming again. Desperate, White is trying to find other sources of funding.
“Transportation is a core function of government. It’s one of the things taxpayers expect their government to deliver to them,” White said.
“The program that was designed to keep our system ahead of the game was no longer functioning because we were having to divert all our funds into maintenance. So we’re hoping in this session to have a meaningful conversation with legislators about how to fund our transportation system and take care of this core function of government. Traditionally most of y’all know that’s been done by way of the fuel tax . . . but we need to look at a more diversified way of funding transportation.”
White sees two new streams of revenue: Use tax and gaming revenue both have big unobligated portions that go back into the general fund. Bills are being proposed to do this.
“I’m not asking for a certain amount of money but a new model of funding so we don’t fall behind.
“To adequately and efficiently fund a transportation system, you have to be able to forecast years into the future, what the funds are going to be like and how best to implement them and plan for projects. “Capacity projects can take 10 years to plan and complete. The state has to get the ball rolling with an initial funding amount, only then will the feds open their purses — big purses.
“We have to spend state dollars upfront. Then the officials with the Federal Highway Administration follow with us as this work is being done. If they can assure themselves that we’re meeting federal standards and following all the guidelines and the laws, then they reimburse us the 80 or 90 percent. So the state portion of the money is very critical because we have to use that first in order to take advantage of the federal funds. We’re a state agency, but we implement a federal program.”
And what happens if the state drops the ball? What happens if Republican legislators are so afraid of getting defeated that they refuse to properly fund our roads and highways?
White was very careful about his words but the message was clear: “We have to maintain our system at least at the rate that we’re not falling so far behind that the feds need to come in and cause us to make other decisions like has been the case in other items.”
Hint: When the city of Jackson refused to raise taxes and maintain its water system, the feds took over and appointed its own czar. Mayor Lumumba took a huge amount of flak for that incompetence. Now the state legislature is heading down the same path. If the state won’t do the job, the Federal Highway Department will.
Lumumba’s incompetence ended with a federal takeover and a huge amount of federal money. Are our state legislators planning a similar strategy?
The legislature and the governor can move quickly. It took them all of one day to give $260 million in tax incentives to Amazon. So why can’t our legislature take advantage of all the federal money just waiting to be invested in Mississippi. Like Medicaid expansion, federal road money gets a nine to one match. For every one dollar the state puts up, the feds give us nine dollars back. That makes all these corporate deals look horrible in comparison.
White went on to say: “We’re very concerned that this capacity program is once again going to be put in danger. And once again the commission would have to pause that program and divert the funds being used for construction and building out a more efficient system would go back into maintenance which would make us a maintenance state all over again.”
“When people ask us why that’s a problem. When you look back 12 years ago, that’s the reason we ended up with places like Highway 49 in Rankin County and the reason we have situations like I-55 in DeSoto County. The reason you have congestion like I-20 in Warren County. It’s because the program that was designed to keep our program ahead of the game was no longer functioning because we were having to divert all our funds into maintenance.”
That’s why we have trash on the highways, no lights on I-55 and no landscaping on our highways. The Republican aversion to taxes is also why gangs are running our prisons, our schools are underfunded and our mental health system is in disarray. It’s probably also the reason our state population has stagnated since the beginning of Republican rule.
I give the Republicans credit for balancing the budget. But the cost is high. We need to be smart about state money. Anybody would jump at a deal of putting up one dollar to get nine back. Why can’t we?
