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February 04, 2009 05:23 AM UTC

FASTER Plan Needs Progressives On Board

  • 15 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

The centerpiece of Governor Bill Ritter’s transportation plan, Senate Bill 108, faces a crucial test in the Senate tomorrow.

The bill is facing significant opposition led by Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, and Republicans are expected to come in fairly solidly against the bill–but the key focus for proponents now has turned not to cracking the GOP minority, rather to winning over three solidly liberal Democrats: Sens. Morgan Carroll, Lois Tochtrop and Paula Sandoval.

We are familiar with some of the objections to the FASTER plan from the left, and we accept some of them as legitimate. What FASTER proponents point to in response, while acknowledging concern about higher fees, toll roads, and (potentially, it’s just a study) regressive mileage taxes, is the GOP alternative, reported by the Colorado Statesman in mid-January:

[State Rep. Frank] McNulty said Republicans are not flatly against new fees, but said the Legislature should do more to find existing revenue to fund transportation before asking residents to pay more. When asked where he might cut existing money from a largely hamstrung state budget, McNulty gave a few suggestions.

“The Governor’s Energy Office (is one place), and then we could roll into the expanded entitlement programs – welfare programs – that have been expanded in the last two years,” McNulty said. “There are things that we can do to roll back government and instead use the money to fund transportation priorities.”

Look, everybody knows the transportation funding crisis is real and won’t be solved long-term by the federal stimulus package–it’s just a question of how the state will respond. We think it’s a cogent argument that anyone who values all the stuff in the budget besides transportation should try to preserve a funding channel from transportation-related sources, like the FASTER plan tries to do.

The alternative seems uncomfortably close to servicing the aims of guys like McNulty, who would be perfectly happy to solve Colorado’s transportation woes by taking a jackhammer to everything else good progressives care about.

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15 thoughts on “FASTER Plan Needs Progressives On Board”

  1. Coloradoan

    State officials say the number of Colorado households receiving government assistance for groceries grew by 19 percent last year, up by 8,000 households just between October to December. Larimer County saw a 24 percent increase from December 2007 to December 2008, matching Boulder and Jefferson counties for the highest increase among the state’s urban areas.

    9News

    Colorado’s unemployment rate has reached a five-year high. At 6.1 percent, the unemployment rate for the month of December reflects an increase of three-tenths of one percentage point from the previous month.

    “This is a tough one, this is a real tough one. This recession is global, it’s national, there’s really no country that isn’t impacted. Colorado isn’t an island and we have to survive this one as best we can,” Alexandra Hall, chief economist of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, said.

    The number of first-time claims for unemployment insurance topped 61,000 in the last quarter of 2008. That’s the highest number of first-time claims the CDLE has seen since Sept. 11, 2001. In the first three months following the terror attacks, more than 56,000 people filed for such benefits. Hall expects the number of those claims will continue to climb.

    Denver Post

    The gravely ill economy is making Colorado’s health care system sick.

    The state Medicaid office since January 2008 has enrolled 3,000 new members a month for health aid to low-income residents, a rate a spokeswoman calls “astronomical” and unprecedented in the program’s 40-year history.

    Yeah, highways need fixing, but making people who drive (which includes me) pay seems a better approach than gutting social services already buckling under the strain.

  2. I’ve only had time to read the summary of the bill. If the legislature had responsibly done something about highway funding last year, we wouldn’t be here.

    Rep. McNulty’s comments are relevant, virtually every every department and program has to be scrutinized, and in fact Gov. Ritter has already proposed significant cuts in social programs. The GEO is no exception for scrutiny, but to eliminate it altogether (as Rep McNulty has proposed) when that agency could serve as a catalyst for the emerging green and renewable energy industries in Colorado would be a mistake. Colorado has a very real opportunity to be the leader in this, it creates good jobs that can’t be exported, and the long term economic benefits are real.

    That being said, the opposition to this bill from progressives I assume is in the creation of the quasi-governmental businesses and the authority they would be granted, and the resulting lack of accountability and transparency (real or imagined). The devil is in the details, and a lively debate is certainly warranted to see if this is the model to follow.  

  3. at the very time they are needed most.

    I also think its a bad idea to eliminate the GEO.  But the Republicans have no solutions.  Penry fought bringing CO’s severance taxes on par with our neighboring states; and now his solution–in part–is to save $3 million by eliminating the front license plate.  1/10th what the severance tax would have brought in, and still he wants to divert another $25 from the current (lowest in the region) severance tax to fund highways–even though its not meeting the current needs for gaspatch communities.

    1. Always wanted to get rid of that front license plate on my Miata. There was a bill in the GA a few years ago to do just that, but was defeated under opposition by law enforcement.

      How about selling naming rights for bridges and selling advertising space on them? I’m only half joking, and I think the Republicans would love it. It’s a great free market solution.

  4. is that you get to kick and scream without proposing any real answers.  

    “Elections have consequences. Transponders and toll gates may be among them,” Penry said.

    Wait a minute! I thought the “permanent campaign” was on hold. Who said that on the first day of the session? Oh, yeah. The Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry.

    ( And by the way…that snappy one liner sucks as it makes NO SENSE. I’d fire the guy who came up with that crap. Yeah “elections have consequences”. Sure they do. You win or you lose as a consequence. Toll roads are not, however, a consequence……)

    Nice.

    It’s clear now. This whole debate is not about about creating jobs or safer bridges. It’s about finding fodder for negative campaign ads.

    Great way to lead, Josh.

    By the way, while we’re at it:

    You couldn’t wipe your ass with the paltry 150 million dollars you’re purporting to raise with your “plan”. You’re seeing the same numbers that everyone else is. You know what the needs are and how much they cost.

    And by the way, no one is forcing communities to allow toll roads. You’d know that if you read the bill, right? Communities would be able to decide if they wanted to allow toll roads, and only after they got neighboring communities to sign off.

    No wonder your numbers keep shrinking.  

    1. Here’s the AP article where this gem of a lame ass one-liner came from.


      Full Senate scheduled to vote on car fee hike

      By COLLEEN SLEVIN, The Associated Press

      2009-02-04

      DENVER –

      Senate Democrats plan to push ahead with a plan to raise vehicle registration fees to pay for highway and bridge repairs without the support of Republican leaders.

      They scheduled a vote in the full Senate on Wednesday, prompting Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Fruita, to announce late Tuesday that talks with Republican leaders about changing the bill had “gridlocked.” Penry said Republicans would try to make some changes to the measure (Senate Bill 108) on the floor, but he suspected Democrats had enough votes to pass the bill or they wouldn’t have scheduled a vote.

      The measure (Senate Bill 108) has three main parts. Starting this year, it would tack on fees to vehicle registrations – $32 for passenger cars and many sport utility vehicles – and impose a $2 daily fee on rental cars. To raise more money in the future, it would allow tolling of existing highways and try out a plan to charge drivers based on the number of miles they travel as a possible replacement for the gas tax.

      The Democratic proposal would raise about $250 million a year from the new fees that could be leveraged through bonding. Backers say it’s enough money to fix more than 100 of the state’s worst bridges and catch up on road maintenance over four years.

      Penry said Republicans had come up with a plan to raise $150 million a year through a combination of fees and $25 million in severance taxes. He said the fee on passenger cars would have been between $10 and $15 a year. Penry said the plan included waiting for the economy to recover and then gradually finding an extra $10 million a year within the state budget to pay for roads. Altogether, he said the plan would have provided $1.7 billion for highways and bridges over 10 years.

      Penry said he also objected to the mileage study and the proposal to toll on existing roads. The mileage study would be voluntary, but Penry said he didn’t want to study an idea that would hurt drivers in rural areas who often drive longer distances than those in cities.

      “Elections have consequences. Transponders and toll gates may be among them,” Penry said.

      Democratic Rep. Joe Rice of Littleton, the House sponsor of the bill, said the Republican proposal wouldn’t have raised enough money and would have also doubled the rental car fee and imposed a $2 per trip fee on taxi rides which he didn’t think was fair. He said he backed Penry’s plan to take more money from the budget for transportation but said lawmakers first had to talk to the agencies, such as higher education, that would lose money under that approach.

  5. We all pay for the roads one way or another. The question may be how much each of us pays, but at the end of the day we all collectively have paid 100% of the cost of the roads.

    So it strikes me that toll roads which charge based on usage are a very equtable way to charge for it. Use it more, pay more. Especially if they change the toll based on traffic levels.

    1. rather than hidden in gas taxes will motivate people much more to change their highway usage. It becomes an expense you have to budget for, rather than simply a reduction in your income. Even if nobody changed the amount they paid, the psychology is very different.

  6. allyn has a point

    If the legislature had responsibly done something about highway funding last year, we wouldn’t be here.

    The facts are these. The Democrat leadership on this issue can prevail easily. The Senate is 21-14 and the House 39-26. This FASTER plan was apparently bipartisan and if the leadership wants to act they should. In fact they owe this to those who elected them.

    Step up, pass it and move on.

    Next issue: 08-09 and 09-10 budgets!

    1. If you go to the state website, legislature page they have live audio feeds  http://www.leg.state.co.us/cli…

      Man is this bill a mess. I thought it was a simple fees for safe bridges bill. There have been like 100 amendments to this turd because of its over reaching intent.

      I thought this was a bi-partisan work, apparently not all the Dems are on board. There are a ton of amendments to clean up the damage this bill will do to the logistics sector.

      It seems there are all kinds of trickery going on. Now one speaker is calling for a time out because he says there is a deal at hand.

  7. I get Morgan Carroll – but Sandoval and Tochtrop?  Tochtrop is very pro union but also loves financial industry folks and is very, very pro gun and is known as an unpredictable D vote. Sandoval often allies with the Catholic church, such as helping them oppose bills designed to help victims of sexual assault, and also her votes often ally with various folks like the banking and the financial and real estate industries versus working class folks, even those in her district.  Look at their votes and you will see they are some of the more unpredictable D votes.

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