GOP announces another big roads plan

Major transportation funding proposals are coming so often these days at the Capitol, the list of ideas is getting as crowded as rush-hour traffic.

In the latest item, statehouse Republicans today announced a new idea for how to put more money into fixing Colorado’s crumbling roads and sagging bridges. The plan involves taking so-called Senate Bill 1 dollars ‑ which go to transportation only when the budget is flush – and committing to put that money toward transportation in good times as well as bad.

More significant, though, is the compromise Republicans hope will get Democrats on board: eliminating the Arveschoug-Bird limit, which holds the growth of the state’s all-important general fund budget to 6 percent annually.

“There are a lot of ideas down here,” state Rep. Don Marostica, R-Loveland, said. “But this is a great idea.”

Indeed this is at least the fifth major proposal on transportation funding floated so far this session. Republicans have floated four of them, with the latest coming just yesterday when House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, suggested the state should do away with its conservation easement program and use the money saved there to pay for road and bridge fixes.

Democrats have been pushing their own plan, known as FASTER, which would raise annual vehicle registration fees to get more money for roads. Negotiations on a bi-partisan agreement broke down in the Senate. But, as the bill now moves to the House, lawmakers there are still optimistic of a compromise – and said they would give full consideration to the Republicans’ new proposal.

“The details are important,” said Rep. Joe Rice, a Littleton Democrat who is FASTER’s House sponsor. “But the concept is sound.”

To truly understand why Republicans think this latest idea is the best would require a personal tutor on the Colorado budget’s convoluted provisions. But the Cliff’s Notes version is this:

In good economic times when the state budget fills up to the 6 percent limit, the state puts a certain amount of the overflow money into transportation. (For those interested in the advanced course, it is possible for the state budget to slop over the 6 percent limit without filling high enough to trigger the larger Tax payer’s Bill of Rights revenue limit and thus requiring taxpayer refunds.)

Democrats have long bemoaned that the 6 percent limit doesn’t give the state enough flexibility in planning its budget, while Republicans have fretted that, in some years, transportation funding gets short shrift.

The first half of the Republicans’ plan – contained in House Bill 1154 from Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling ‑ would essentially do away with the overflow provision and instead require the state to put a little more than 10 percent of its annual sales and use tax revenue into transportation funding. (That 10 percent figure roughly corresponds to the proportion of sales and use tax that comes from auto-related purchases.)

“If we truly want to make transportation a priority in this state, then we can’t just give it what’s left over,” Sonnenberg said. “And that’s how we’ve been funding transportation.”

The second part of the plan hinges on a yet-to-be-introduced measure from Marostica and Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, that would eliminate the 6 percent limit. May, the House minority leader, said the limit would no longer serve its purpose if transportation funding was protected in the general fund budget.

“If they’re really serious about transportation,” May said of Democrats, “they’ll jump on board.”

The Republicans’ announcement, though, came as a surprise to Morse, who said he had no idea that Republicans intended to connect his work on eliminating the 6 percent limit, which he said he is still crafting, to a transportation plan of their own.

“This is news to me,” Morse said, “but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad news.”

While not dismissing the Republican’s idea, Morse and Rice also raised serious questions about it.

For instance, Rice noted, Sonnenberg’s bill would require the state to spend $224 million in a next-year budget that already has to cut by hundreds of millions of dollars. That means transportation would eat up funding that would otherwise go to other parts of the budget and result in even deeper budget cuts to areas such as higher education.

“That is where the conversation is still possible but it gets more difficult,” Rice said.

Morse said it is important to connect his bill to broader economic stimulus bills – he mentioned FASTER – so that Colorado’s budget can rebound quickly.

“All that is very intertwined where, if you do a little bit of it but you don’t do all of it, it doesn’t really work,” Morse said.

Republicans, meanwhile, remained steadfast in their opposition to FASTER, saying its registration fee increases are too much.

“Fees should be the last thing you look at,” May insisted.

All of this sets the stage for what looks to be more divisive and fiery debate over FASTER and the rest of the transportation plans out there. In the rush hour of ideas this session, carpooling may be out of the question.

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