Referendum seeks to ban raids on state transportation fund

Talk about it

Voters in Pierce, St. Croix and 51 other counties will be asked to vote Nov. 2 on an advisory referendum suggesting Wisconsin make it unconstitutional to use its transportation fund for other purposes.

Money in the fund comes from the gas tax consumers pay at the pump and from vehicle registration fees. Taxpayers expect this money will be used to make their roads safer, yet in less than a decade the state has diverted more than $1.3 billion to pay for other things, say referendum supporters.

Lack of funding is causing counties to fall farther and farther behind on road repair projects, jeopardizing the safety of highways and multiplying the cost for the future, said St. Croix County Highway Commissioner Tim Ramberg and Pierce County Highway Commissioner Chad Johnson.

“If the money continues to be diverted, then there’s less for transportation,” said Johnson, who urged the County Board to put the issue to voters.

“Every year we should be reconstructing five miles of road because a road bed lasts 50 years,” he said. “We’re hardly touching that.”

“You don’t know it unless you’re right out in it,” said Ramberg, who has worked for the Highway Department for 21 years. He compared regular repaving to re-shingling a house and chip sealing to changing oil in a car. Delaying that maintenance is a mistake, he said.

In 2009 St. Croix paved 9.9 miles of road, or 70% of its goal, and constructed 5.7 miles, or 81% of the goal, said Ramberg.

State road aids to counties are a percentage of eligible expenses. While that percentage should have been 30%, in 2009 it was 22.2%, said Ramberg. For 2010, the percentage dropped a little more.

“It keeps shrinking because the pot is shrinking,” said Ramberg.

He said his department doesn’t cut its winter maintenance budget or costs related to other safety issues, but instead is forced to back off repair and construction projects.

Johnson figured that in the last few years, Pierce County has fallen $19 million short of being able to keep to its road repair schedule.

While adoption of the referendum, which asks the Legislature to consider a constitutional amendment, won’t be an immediate fix, it will stop the leak of money intended for road work, said Johnson.

“(The money) is intended for transportation, and it’s a segregated fund,” agreed Ramberg. He said the change would “put the trust back in ‘trust fund.’”

In recent years Americans have been driving less, thus reducing gas tax income and transportation revenues.

Despite that, said Ramberg, state elected officials have diverted money to other budget areas.

He pointed to reports that show $1.3 billion has been diverted since 2003. Over $850 million of that was replaced with borrowed money, but the net loss to the transportation fund was over $435 million.

Because the state government has failed to respect the objectives of the transportation fund, the public and federal legislators no longer trust that gas taxes will be used appropriately, said Ramberg.

The referendum, even if adopted by all the counties that are voting on it, is simply advisory. An amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution must pass two separate sessions of the same Legislature before going on a ballot statewide for voter approval.

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The question is “Should the Wisconsin Constitution be amended to prohibit any further transfers or lapses from the state’s segregated transportation fund?”

Tags: elections, politics