One theme should rise to the top of the Indiana General Assembly's final leg of this legislative session: Don't play kick the can down the crumbling roads of Indiana.
The can is likely to get stuck in a pothole anyhow.
A crucial plan to provide a long-term, sustainable funding source for repairing and maintaining Hoosier highways and byways appears stranded in an Indianapolis committee, and it has nothing to do with the road-strangling blizzard the Region just experienced.
Late last week, we learned the author of that plan, Indiana House Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, took steps to keep it alive, moving the plan into a roads bill originally championed by Gov. Mike Pence.
The crucial difference between the two plans is that Pence's original proposal would have included borrowing money to tackle $1 billion in investments to our deteriorating roadways.
Soliday's plan, now part of the Pence bill, would free up more gas sales tax money for roads while adding an additional $1-per-pack cigarette tax to make up for Medicaid's portion of the sales tax, which would be flowing to roads.
Soliday said he made the change because he expects his original bill, House Bill 1001, will undergo "significant surgery" in a Senate committee Thursday, and he wanted to keep the House provisions alive.
"We need this in order for the process to work and to make sure we have all the pieces on the table," Soliday said. "This is one step in a process that will become more intense over the next seven to eight days."
The real question is why there is any question at all.
Our transportation infrastructure is among our state's most important assets, both for quality of life and commerce.
All too often, politicians cower from doing what is right because it will prompt the dreaded T-word — taxes.
Too frequently as a society, citizens balk at any tax increases.
While waste in government has given us plenty of examples of money not being spent wisely, there can be no wiser investment than the staple services we all use and upon which our society thrives or starves.
The Indiana Legislature needs to summon fortitude and pass the Soliday plan, regardless of the bill in which its language is contained. We can't borrow our way out of broken roads and the need for future transportation expansion if our state is to grow.
And avoiding the issue by playing kick the can isn't legislating. It's playing chicken with an eventual disaster lurking behind all neglected infrastructure.