COLUMNIST

Vaccines and highway funding

Sometimes, problems get solved. Sometimes, the solution leaves very few traces of the old problem. Then the thing that cured the problem looks useless and, to some, perhaps even harmful.

So maybe vaccines and highway funding have something in common.

The state’s highway program is been “inoculated” against partisan meddling and corruption for more than 60 years. We’re about to lower our defenses a bit. I think that’s a bow to financial and political reality. Just consider this a friendly reminder that, from now on, we’re going to have to be more careful about washing our hands and covering our mouths when we cough, so to speak.

The State Highway Commission has long had its own source of revenue — a fuel tax. I won’t repeat the well-known — and completely true

— figures about how revenue from that tax flatlined years ago. The commission needs more money. Yet there’s little support for increasing the fuel tax or adding new ones. So the commission and its supporters are asking for a share of state general revenues such as sales taxes. They are bound to get it.

Highways never got general fund money before because former Gov. Mike Beebe was a rock on the issue of not using state general funds for highways. So were governors before him. Money diverted from the state’s general fund would be money that wasn’t available for schools, higher education, health and prisons.

Now Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the like-minded believe they can divert some sales taxes and cover the costs with the natural year-to-year growth in revenue. More potently, the voting public wants more money for roads but doesn’t want to pay more taxes. Things might be different if the state’s highway program had suffered serious scandal in the last 60 years. It hasn’t. There are reasons.

The commission in its current form was set up after allegations of corruption reached toxic levels back in the early 1950s. Those allegations never did lead to an indictment. People whose reputations were tainted or even ruined said the whole thing was cooked up for partisan political purposes.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the old scandals of the 1950s were all cooked up. The changes that resulted protected this state’s road program from similar partisan skulduggery for more than 60 years. Now let’s argue that the old allegations had some truth behind them but just could never be proven. Then the changes that resulted protected this state from things far worse that just partisan skulduggery.

Those changes included a constitutional amendment giving the highway commission a lot of autonomy. That and giving the commission its own tax revenue removed any grounds for accusing the governor’s office of demanding campaign contributions in return for highway contracts, for instance.

That autonomy was never complete. There never was a time the Highway Commission could just ignore the Legislature. The system wasn’t flawless, either. I’m old enough to remember when Henry Gray, once the director of the Highway Department, was considered one of the most powerful men in the state. I’d argue that had at least as much to do with his abilities as the system he inherited. Citizens and lawmakers on the other side in any disagreement with Gray, though, had plenty of criticism of the system.

Whatever the system’s failings, it did exactly what it was created to do. It kept things aboveboard and free of scandal.

Nobody is talking about repealing the Highway Commission’s constitutional independence. The talk about money so far is also about diverting specific revenue, like sales taxes on auto parts and such, to highways. That would give the commission a share of general revenue, but a well-defined share. In essence, the commission would still have its own “sources” of revenue.

Still, what the Legislature gives, the Legislature can take away — or threaten to. The lines separating partisan politics and highways will become less clear once the money is mixed.

Most laws that were ever passed were passed for a reason. Maybe these particular reasons don’t apply any more. Perhaps we’ll mix fuel taxes and general revenue with no ill effects at all. I hope so.

I just figure posting a reminder won’t hurt.

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Doug Thompson is a political reporter and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at dthompson@nwadg . com .

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