A couple of state lawmakers were painting dire prospects for any new highway funding from the state Legislature.
Their message was plain.
"When we start having bridges collapse and people killed, then we'll start funding highways," said Dan Douglas, R-Bentonville, who tried and failed to get his colleagues to go along with a road program in the recent regular session.
House Speaker Jeremy Gillam, R-Judsonia, also said lawmakers won't take highway needs seriously, preferring to push the issue off.
The forum for all this commiserating was last week's Arkansas Economic Development Commission's Arkansas Rural Development Conference in Hot Springs.
A panel discussion on Wednesday and an appearance by Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday both focused on highways and the need to shift from appealing to lawmakers for funding help to a direct plea to taxpayers for dedicated road money.
Arkansas' Republican-controlled Legislature is definitely more interested in tax cuts and tax reform than in raising more money for highways or much of anything else.
This is the Legislature Arkansans wanted, the one voters put in place over several election cycles. The no-tax climate is part of the package.
But state highway officials are convincing themselves and others that voters could still be persuaded to approve an initiative to send more money to roads.
There's a full push on to get the Arkansas Highway Commission, which will take up the matter again next month, to refer something directly to voters in 2018.
Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done to get an issue to the ballot, and discussions like those last week are laying more groundwork for the petition drive and ballot push.
Douglas' latest failed pitch to the Legislature earlier this year was for a bond issue funded by a 6.5 percent sales tax on wholesale fuel prices. The statewide tax would have raised an estimated $200 million a year.
That was quite a step down from a proposal the session before that would have gradually transferred state general tax revenue from car-related items to highways. It promised in time to pull a lot more money out of general revenue, which would have meant cuts to other programs and services in favor of highways.
That was much too high a hill for legislators to climb but so was the more modest offering this year, all of which has combined to lead lawmakers like Douglas and Gov. Hutchinson to get on board with going around the Legislature and directly to the people.
"I don't see anything right now, with the makeup of the Legislature, passing the Legislature," Douglas said last week.
As for the governor, he said last week he's all for giving the voters the opportunity to develop a highway plan. He said he'd like to see an initiated act based on what Douglas tried to pass in the Legislature this year.
Hutchinson, who has announced he will seek re-election in 2018, made clear, however, that his own race will be his priority.
Getting the campaign for a highway package going must be someone else's job.
That would be the Highway Commission, the department it oversees, the industries that would benefit from a road-building program, local entities that would get a piece of the funding pie and more.
They must mount the campaign, raise money to finance it and somehow get voters who have been choosing lawmakers who won't raise taxes to agree to raise taxes themselves.
There is no guarantee of success here. The state could still end up waiting for bridges to collapse or major accidents to occur on the state's deteriorating roads to spur action for future highway funding.
Commentary on 05/31/2017