After stupidly doing away with the automatic gas tax increases because it sounded good and fiscally pandered to voters, we’re now finding out the state is in big trouble paying for continued highway upkeep. It looks like the Republican formula of no tax increases, big tax cuts and dumping the poor from their own government safety nets, isn’t so fiscally brilliant.
It’s not that’ll put a stop to their agenda. Sen. Alberta Darling was asked once what her party would do if their tax cuts didn’t work. Without hesitation, she shot back, “then you have to reduce the size and scope of government (more).”
jsonline: The state gas tax would have to rise 50 cents - a 152% increase, to nearly 83 cents a gallon - to cover road costs that are now being paid through property taxes or other general tax revenue, a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers say. The study challenges some common claims about how transportation is funded in this state.
Highway advocates typically contend roads pay for themselves, through gas taxes and user fees. But that's only true of state-owned highways, which account for just 10% of all Wisconsin roads … When local roads are included, property taxes and other general taxes cover 41% to 55% of road costs … For local roads alone, property taxes paid 83% of costs, or $9.9 billion, over the five-year period that ended June 30, 2008 … That comes out to 20% of the average property tax bill. If roads were fully funded by gas taxes and vehicle fees, local governments could afford to cut property taxes and increase services, instead of raising taxes and cutting services, the environmental group said.
"Taxpayers cover costs that should be borne by road users," says the study by UW-Madison's State Smart Transportation Initiative.
Opponents of public transit often use that kind of language, describing tax support for transit as a "subsidy" and arguing bus and train riders should pay all costs. But in the five-year period studied, state aid to transit systems accounted for less than 6% of the $10.2 billion that the state spent. And while drivers pay just 17% of the cost of local roads, bus riders paid almost 29% of transit costs in 2010.
Roads take an average of $779 a year from each Wisconsin household in property taxes and other general taxes, while gas tax support for public transit amounts to $50 a year for each Wisconsin household, the study found. In the 2011-'13 state budget, Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-led Legislature increased spending on major highways while cutting aid to local roads and public transit.
Do Republican ever study anything before they willy nilly pass austerity measures regardless of the consequences.
The environmental group released its study just a week after the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute issued the latest in a series of studies advocating tolls as a way to pay for rebuilding the state's aging interstate highways.
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