INDIANAPOLIS -- County officials from around Indiana arrived at the Statehouse Tuesday with a tough request: Give us billions of dollars to fix our roads and bridges.
They didn’t have much problem making the case that their infrastructure is crumbling, given a decade’s decline in funds for local governments to maintain 85,000 miles of roads and 12,000 bridges.
Harder was the argument that legislators may have to impose new taxes to raise that revenue.
“There’s no pain-free way to solve this,” said Stephanie Yager, who heads the Indiana Association of County Commissioners. “But it’s not pain-free to ride down a road that’s full of potholes."
Yager, a former county commissioner from the tourist haven of scenic Brown County, has watched paved roads turn back to gravel as gas tax revenues used for local repairs dwindled over the past decade.
A local “wheel tax” – imposed on every motorist residing in Brown County – hasn’t raised enough dollars to close the gap.
“We welcome the tourists, they’re a big part of our economy,” she said. “But our roads take a beating.”
Jason Heile, a Davies County highway engineer and president of the Indiana Association of County Highway Engineers and Supervisors, made a similar case at the Statehouse.
With a stretch of the new Interstate 69 running through his county, Heile says there’s not enough money to build side roads for the development that will come with the highway.
There's barely enough to keep existing roads patched.
“Most people I talk to know we need more funding. They can see it every time they drive on our roads,” he said.
Two years ago, the General Assembly allocated an extra $65 million a year for local governments to make road repairs. The proposed state budget now under debate maintains that funding.
The increase was intended to help make up for declining dollars from the gas tax. Proceeds have fallen - due largely to more fuel efficient vehicles - to about $500 million a year from almost $700 million a decade ago.
But that extra money barely made a dent in the need.
A Purdue University study in 2009 estimated that local governments need more than $5 billion just to bring roads and bridges up to federal safety standards. A state-funded survey last year echoed those findings.
That doesn’t include $4 billion that the state Department of Transportation says it needs just to repair state’s aging highways and bridges, which make up just a fraction of the total road infrastructure.
Proposed solutions aren’t easy, said House Transportation Chairman Ed Soliday (R-Valparaiso), an advocate of more road funding for local governments.
Soliday called the need “huge” but the appetite for fixing it small.
That’s because fixes include significantly raising the gas tax above its current 18 cents a gallon, siphoning off more sales tax revenue from schools, and/or tagging on “user fees” for every state license plate issued.
None seem palatable for Republican lawmakers who’ve boasted about a series of tax cuts in recent years.
“Sixty-five percent of Hoosiers think roads need to be maintained better. Thirty-five percent are willing to pay for it,” said Soliday, citing a private House poll of voters. “That’s not real compelling when you’re running for office every two years.”
A state Department of Transportation report on the most cost-effective remedies is due out this summer, in time for legislators to make plans for next year's session.
Soliday said lawmakers and local officials alike will have to convince Hoosiers of the value of absorbing the additional costs.
“So far, we haven’t done a good job of convincing (the public) there’s no free lunch," he said.