Gov. Asa Hutchinson went looking last week for help in finding a long-term solution for state highway and transportation improvements.
He asked the Arkansas Good Roads Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for state transportation investment, for its recommendation. There was one caveat to the request: He doesn’t want to ask legislators for a tax hike. But he wants this recommendation before the Legislature meets in January.
Lawmakers probably will be asked to refer something, maybe additional taxes and/or a bond issue, to state voters.
If all this sounds a bit quick, considering the Legislature just recently approved a Hutchinson plan for highway funding, remember that was really a short-term answer to a specific highway funding issue.
What lawmakers approved in a May special session provided state matching funds to federal highway dollars that come to the state.
They tapped state rainy-day funds, surplus funds and interest earnings to make available nearly $50 million or more in each of the next five years to match roughly $200 million a year that will be available in federal funds.
Essentially, they raided the state’s general fund to benefit highways while avoiding a tax increase specifically for roads.
“I believe what we have done is a good solution for our state for some time,” Hutchinson said of that billion-dollar, five-year plan.
But the need doesn’t stop there. And he said the Good Roads Foundation should “lead the discussion into the future.”
He asked them to try to build a consensus on the next step, planning for permanent financing for long-term highway needs.
It’s a tall order, considering earlier efforts from within this administration and others to find some alternative to traditional funding for highways, most of which comes from fuel taxes and license fees.
Nevertheless, Hutchinson is looking forward to the 2017 regular session of the Legislature, when lawmakers will likely take up highway funding again.
Besides telling the group not to propose that the Legislature raise taxes, the governor said there should be no new transfers from general revenue unless there are budget offsets of some sort.
Besides, Hutchinson has said he plans to propose individual income tax cuts in next year’s session, too, which will also impact how the budget gets balanced.
Again, he has given the Good Roads Foundation a tall order, one that is virtually impossible without getting into taxpayers’ pockets.
So Hutchinson added another caveat: If a tax increase is proposed, it must go to Arkansas voters for approval.
“This is not bad news, it is good news,” the governor said, noting that state voters have responded well to specific highway proposals in the past “when it was a good plan, and … when there is confidence that the money is well-invested and it is clear and transparent.”
He’s right about that. The desire for highway improvements has in the past been strong enough to get voters to sign off on higher taxes to fund specific plans.
Usually, those proposals piped money to the state Highway and Transportation Department and to Arkansas cities and counties, which provided an expanded constituency to support the related tax increases.
That will likely be part of any future recommendation, too, following a long-used formula that gives 70 percent of the revenue to the state and 15 percent each to cities and to counties.
Any consensus-building effort must involve all the people who are potential proponents, which is why the governor is looking to the Arkansas Good Roads Foundation, which has been around under one name or another for decades.
The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and the Associated Industries of Arkansas as well as other obvious highway advocates have been involved through the years, often playing this “consensus-building” role and lobbying for one highway program or another.
Many of the individuals in the governor’s audience last week have been part of those past efforts and some have even served on this governor’s own Working Group on Highway Funding.
That group focused last year on the shorter-term problem of matching federal funds but also has longer-term funding on its agenda.
It was hardly unexpected that the Good Roads folks would be pulled into any future planning.
In fact, foundation leaders are already talking about how they might proceed. Foundation Director Craig Douglass said last week that they might conduct a series of research projects to interview each state lawmaker as well as conduct community focus groups and talk to business leaders and economic development and chamber of commerce officials.
The daunting challenge is to get a whole lot of people — inside the government and out — on board before they (or the governor) recommend anything, particularly some tax increase of bond issue, to pay for more highways.
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Brenda Blagg is a freelance columnist and longtime journalist in Northwest Arkansas. Email her at [email protected] .