All they want for Christmas is some highway money.
Well, they really want it anytime they can get it. And they have high hopes their wish, or parts of it, will be granted next year.
"They" are the many interested folks who lobby for better highways in Arkansas.
Count the Governor's Working Group on Highway Funding among them because it includes representatives from those traditional lobbying forces, including the Arkansas State Highway Commission and many others.
The working group completed its task and formally delivered proposed funding options to Gov. Asa Hutchinson just last week.
He has promised to review what the working group chose to present -- strictly short-term recommendations -- and announce his decision by mid-January.
Hutchinson created the task force after he rejected the last try to increase highway funding presented to the state Legislature. The intent behind the working group was to come up with acceptable alternatives his administration can support and still attend to other demands on the state budget.
Whether these recommendations meet the criteria is apparently what he is mulling over. Not surprisingly, they involve tax hikes and the diversion of general fund money to highways.
Hutchinson has said whatever he does needs to be "revenue-neutral," which means he wants any increases offset by cuts elsewhere in the state budget.
The decisions that lie ahead for him and for state lawmakers are about setting priorities.
While highways are the priority for some, other state needs have their own constituencies. The governor and the Legislature have an obligation to consider them all as they craft the annual budget.
This particular working group has been looking for a way to raise $160 million over the next one to three years. That's far from enough to do all the work on the state highway department's "wish" list, but it could pump $110 million new dollars into the department's hands.
The other $50 million would go to the state's cities and counties under a long-standing sharing arrangement that sends 15 percent of certain revenue to cities and 15 percent to counties. The local governments have their own formulae for dividing the dollars up.
The 70 percent that would go to the state highway department would be spent to match federal aid for road construction and for an overlay program. The proposed split, if the short-term funding goal is met, would use $50 million of the state's share for matching federal aid and the other $60 million for overlays, sealing projects and other non-federally funded projects.
These are what the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department cited as its most critical funding needs.
To be sure, the department also outlined for the working group mid-term and long-term targets that would require another $290 million in funding and that doesn't include the "ultimate" plea for $16.8 billion to meet really long-term goals.
Looking at those numbers, the $160 million for state and local use over the next few years doesn't seem like an overly aggressive goal.
The hitch comes in how the working group proposes to raise the money.
The group calls it a "menu" of options and it includes some familiar ideas as well as some not-so-familiar ones. The full report is available online for those who want more detail.
Among the recommendations are raising motor fuel and diesel taxes, indexing motor fuel taxes to inflation, taxing other fuels like compressed natural gas and transferring sales tax revenue from sales of car-related items to the highway fund. The latter would be phased in, supposedly to help the current general fund recipients adjust to the loss of revenue for them.
The working group also suggested eliminating the sales tax exemption from fuel sales, increasing registration fees for hybrid and electric vehicles and transitioning to a system that would require drivers to report their annual mileage and pay a fee based on miles driven.
There are more, but you get the idea. It is a mixed bag of options and includes some major policy transitions, some of which would definitely hurt funding for other state needs.
Some of the proposals might be addressed in the upcoming fiscal 2016 session of the Legislature. Or Gov. Hutchinson could call a special session on highway funding, if the proposals can't wait until 2017.
Presumably, he'll let us know something in January.
Until then, anyone dreaming of highway funding might instead try for visions of sugarplums.
Commentary on 12/23/2015