September 19, 2016 at 2:41 p.m.
Road rats
Road rats
Turns out, the good senator wants to raise the gas tax by a nickel and then index it to inflation, so we can pay ever more for a disproportionate share of those taxes to be used downstate for highways we'll never or rarely use.
Erpenbach believes the more roads we build, especially downstate, the more jobs the state will create. That's economic baloney, of course.
Not that infrastructure isn't important; it is. But while it may be a necessary condition for economic development, it is not a sufficient one. Other factors are way more important - the regulations that would be imposed upon a business if it located to an area, the level of taxation, the number of trained workers, recreational opportunities, and so on.
If we really wanted jobs, we would educate and train our young people, lower corporate taxes across the board, slash regulations, level the competitive playing field by eliminating targeted tax credits and loopholes (i.e., special-interest welfare), and abolish the personal income tax.
If a company thinks an area is attractive because of its level playing field, its skilled work force, its natural resources, its low taxes and sparse regulations, then government, in having made such an environment possible, will have already done all that it can do.
And, if companies need a big shiny highway to take advantage of those benefits, let them pay for that big shiny highway through the use of tollways, especially in southeastern Wisconsin. For all those benefits, they would be happy to.
The truth is, only two entities should be paying most of the tab for massive interstate schemes in southern Wisconsin. The first is industry, which right now relies on you and me and our grandchildren (when we borrow for transportation) to subsidize their transportation costs.
Instead, they should pay at the tollway. Consider that those roads carry only half of all traffic but 70 percent of the state's freight. In other words, these are industrial and commercial cargo routes more than anything else, and commercial interests and industry should pay the bulk of the costs.
And, by the way, the Walker administration says that more than 90 percent of those most heavily traveled highways are rated as in fair or better condition, so it's a great time to establish a tollway system that can pay to keep those roads well maintained.
The second entity is the federal government, which needs to sustain an interstate network of highways for defense purposes. Let them pay their share, too.
Everybody else can use the roads at their own discretion, and pay for the convenience when they do so. Otherwise, they can take local roads maintained by local government.
In the meantime, the state of Wisconsin should focus its dollars on those local roads and infrastructure needs, and, by so focusing, it could do so without breaking the bank, without raising taxes, and without borrowing against our future.
In an announcement last week, Gov. Scott Walker seemed to be moving in this direction, saying borrowing for transportation would be kept to a minimum, and that his administration would increase local road aids. That's a step in the right direction.
Another positive step would be for lawmakers to enact legislation that gives local communities more input in DOT project decisions and, except in the most extreme cases of the public interest, veto power in the final instance. Too many highways are being built and expanded without local approval. That's true in southern in Wisconsin, and that's true in northern Wisconsin.
Simply put, the state has been using every trick in the book, from taxing to borrowing to raiding other funds, to pay for what is essentially a money-laundering scheme in which our taxes feather the nests of four or five large road construction companies, who in turn make their unions happy with a large piece of the pie, all to fund roads to nowhere and bridges nobody wants.
What these new highways and roadway expansions don't bring with them is Erpenbach's fantasy of jobs and prosperity. Last time we checked, a new highway will not spontaneously give birth to a prosperous job creator who will travel along the byway leaving the gift of a job in the morning, like Santa at Christmas.
But prosperous people will choose a place to locate their company if that new location will make them more prosperous, and they will stop at nothing to get there, including building a roadway or paying a toll if they need to.
Meanwhile, the DOT, far from worrying about the jobs their highways might create, has been busy in northern Wisconsin "improving" highways so they limit access to small businesses in small towns - in other words, killing jobs and exacerbating poverty in already comparatively poor towns.
They build highways that slash through the heart of cohesive communities and that devastate wetlands and the environment in ways that the worst and most evil polluters can only dream of.
We offer a better approach. Let local communities decide what roads they need to build, and then have the state work with those local communities to fund them fairly. That's the real road to a sound community infrastructure.
For the rest, let the feds and the elite build their sleek and wide superways, and pay for them, too, for once.
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