Our roads are crumbling, not just in Grant County but across the state. Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma (R-Indianapolis) has says the General assembly will deal with the long-range issue of road funding in the upcoming session. we hope so.
There are three things local government, including the state, needs to do well. The rest is less essential.
Indiana’s first duty is to educate children – that effort has turned into a hot mess due to partisan fighting and unclear decision-making by both Democrats, through the office of State Superintendant Glenda Ritz, and by the Republican governor, Mike Pence, who seems to think slogans can easily be converted to education policy without a lot of collateral damage.
The next vital job by state and local government is to keep people safe and protect the rights to property and livelihood. Generally, we think Indiana does a good job at that.
But then we come to our infrastructure, most specifically roads and streets, which are important to the economy, quality of life and the ability, which we take for granted, to easily get from one place to another without damage to cars and trucks.
People passing through our state, who might do nothing but pause at a fast food restaurant on the way elsewhere will form an opinion about the state based pretty much on the quality of our roadways. It won’t be good.
Pence has proposed with a proposal for a $1 billion increase in state road and interstate funding by drawing money from the state’s cash reserves and taking out loans. Alas, for Marion streets, Pence would not add funding for local roads and streets.
Democrats responded Pence’s $1 billion proposal with a $2 billion roads plan, again from reserve and loans.
Bosma has a plan that would raise the state gasoline tax and the state cigarette tax. The tax increase in cigarettes would be $1 a pack. That money would flow to Medicaid funds and free up about $300,000, he estimates, that the state could use for construction and resurfacing roads. The GOP would also call for a study on the possibility of charging tolls on Interstates 65 and 70 across the entire state, which might generate $365 million a year.
We don’t want to raise taxes and we think that a lot of the money wasted by the state on economic development perks and plans could go into building the best road system in the United States. That would do more, we think, to attract employers and stable businesses than corporate welfare.
Whatever is done, the state needs to realize that road maintenance is a constant cost that needs a larger, dedicated revenue stream. Our roadways cannot be relegated to using whatever money might be left after state and local governments spend our tax money on more exotic dreams.