Lawmakers urged to raise highway spending
BOISE – Idaho is the third-fastest-growing state, but the money the state generates for its transportation needs has barely grown in the past decade, lawmakers heard Thursday.
“While our revenue has flattened, construction costs have skyrocketed,” new state Transportation Director Pamela Lowe told legislative budget writers, offering graphic examples. Bridge deck concrete for a Palouse River project in 2003 cost $298 per cubic yard. For a Lower Moyie River bridge project in 2005, the same material cost $784 per cubic yard – a 163 percent increase.
At the same time, Idaho is seeing more cars on the road, more congestion, and more deterioration in existing roads and bridges.
As a result, the Idaho Transportation Board is recommending dramatic fee increases – 75 percent boosts in vehicle registration and permit fees, a 7 percent surcharge on gas, new development impact fees, fees on rental cars, and more.
Four of those fee-increase bills were introduced Thursday in the Senate Transportation Committee, but Chairman John McGee, R-Caldwell, said they were introduced “just for discussion.”
“The governor made it quite clear in his State of the State address that he’s not interested in seeing these on his desk this year, but they deserve to be heard about,” McGee said.
Gov. Butch Otter declared at the start of his first legislative session this year that he wanted no fee or tax increases this year.
Some Transportation Committee members appeared uncomfortable even introducing the bills. The 7 percent gas surcharge bill was approved for introduction on a split, 4-3 vote, with Sens. Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home; Lee Heinrich, R-Cascade; and Bob Geddes, R-Soda Springs, voting no. Geddes, the president pro tem of the Senate, also voted against introducing legislation to raise permit fees, like driver’s license fees, by 75 percent.
The 7 percent surcharge on the wholesale price of gasoline would raise an additional $108.3 million a year for the state’s highway account, which helps fund local highway districts and the Idaho State Police as well as the Transportation Department.
Julie Pipal, the department’s legislative liaison, said of the bills, “The board’s intention was that they would be used to generate discussion about revenue.” Some lawmakers, including McGee, have talked about a possible interim legislative committee next summer to look at the issue, and Pipal said that would be “a perfect environment for us to give revenue options a full airing.”
When Lowe shared the recommendation for 75 percent vehicle registration fee increases with the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Sen. Diane Bilyeu, D-Pocatello, said, “That seems a little high.”
Lowe responded, “Right now, we are very, very low in our vehicle registration fees. … We are one of the absolute lowest in the nation on that.”
Currently, the owner of a 7-year-old car pays a $24 annual registration fee in Idaho, she said. Under the proposed increase, that owner would pay $42.
Sen. Mel Richardson, R-Idaho Falls, told Lowe, “I’m wondering if we’re looking at something, and that’s toll roads.” He recalled finding a beautiful road in an isolated area near Cancun that was a privately built toll road.
Richardson said he’s not necessarily a big promoter of toll roads, but “It looks to me like we’re coming to a crisis of some kind.”
The department and Otter are requesting a $789 million budget for transportation next year, including $264 million in GARVEE bonds. Those Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicles allow the state to borrow against its future federal highway allocations; Idaho issued its first $200 million in GARVEE bonds this year to cover major highway upgrades around the state, including portions of two projects on U.S. Highway 95 in North Idaho.
Budget committee members had lots of questions about the GARVEE program, and several wanted to know how the GARVEE program is affecting other, non-bonded, everyday highway projects around the state. Lowe said there is an impact.
“You have to make holes in the program to pay that debt service, and that debt service, because it’s a federal obligation, is going to come first,” she said.
However, she noted that at least in the initial years, several of the GARVEE projects already were on the drawing boards for Idaho anyway, so they were removed from the regular highway plan – freeing up funds for the bond payments. There will be more impact in later years, she said.
Several North Idaho legislators said they’re concerned about the department’s plan to add two miles to the south end of the GARVEE-funded Garwood-to-Sagle project on Highway 95. Lowe said the board decided to add the section from Wyoming Avenue to Garwood because otherwise, it would have been a two-mile gap of two-lane road between sections of four-lane road.
Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, said she can make the same case for a segment at the north end of the project. “It’s the same thing,” she said.
She said she’s concerned the GARVEE program is causing “a reprioritization of every transportation project in Idaho.”
Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, expressed a similar concern, and said a pressing Dover bridge repair project is going undone as a result.
Keough said she would rather see the Garwood-to-Sagle project completed before it’s expanded.
Darrell Manning, chairman of the Idaho Transportation Board, told the budget committee, “We’ll do the best job that we can with whatever decision that you make.”