Lt. Gov. Tim Murray speaks to the Boston chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar last Wednesday in Worcester. After the meeting, Murray said the Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration does not plan to raise the state’s gasoline tax to help fund transportation infrastructure needs in Massachusetts.
Read his lips: no increase in the gas tax.
“The governor has said that he does not want to pursue the gas tax at this time,” Murray told Banker & Tradesman following a meeting of the Women’s Transportation Seminar’s Boston chapter last Wednesday in Worcester. “We are looking at gaming revenues.”
But Marc Draisen, executive director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, a statewide regional planning and economic development agency, said casinos are not the answer.
“Casino gambling on its own will never be an enough to solve our transportation infrastructure needs,” he said. “The amount of money needed to deal with our transportation problems – as much as $20 billion over the next two decades – cannot be covered by casinos if and when we get them. If we have casinos, there will be a huge number of demands within state government for those revenues.”
The introduction of casinos, Draisen insisted, will substantially reduce the state Lottery receipts that are used to support local aid.
“I don’t always read the tea leaves correctly,” Draisen said. “But my guess is that the cities and towns will have first dibs on some of the casino revenues because they will lose money from the Lottery.”
Draisen suggested that a debate over whether to have a casinos and where to have them is a good idea. But he said even if casino gambling were approved, it will not provide enough cash soon enough to solve the problem of years of neglect.
Last month, the Transportation Finance Commission, an independent panel that evaluates the financial health of the state’s transportation agencies, recommended increasing the gas tax by 11.5 cents per gallon and indexing future hikes to inflation. The commission also suggested implementing a 5 cent-per-mile user fee for all Bay State highways. Together, the taxes and fees would raise $15.5 billion that would help pay for the long overdue infrastructure repairs. Massachusetts drivers pay 41.9 cents in state and federal taxes per gallon, 5 cents below the national average of 46.9 cents, according the American Petroleum Institute.
Gov. Deval Patrick has been reluctant to embrace the ideas. Instead, Murray said the administration is working with the House leadership for passage of legislation that would allow casino gambling in Massachusetts in three areas of the state and raising the state’s ability to borrow to pay for the improvements.
In August, Patrick proposed increasing the state’s borrowing limit, saying that Massachusetts needs to be able to raise more money for transportation projects and other needed state improvements. Under his plan, the so-called bond cap, the amount the state can borrow each year to pay for capital projects, will increase to $1.5 billion up from $1.25 billion. The bond cap last was raised in 2002.
‘A Good Place to Start’
While the Patrick-Murray administration has rejected the gas tax, Draisen said he likes the idea.
“New revenues are needed and the gas tax is a good place to start if we are going to solve our transportation problems,” he said. “The other choice is not to solve them and leave our roads and bridges unsafe.”
The tragedy earlier this year in Minnesota, where an interstate bridge jammed with rush-hour traffic suddenly broke into huge sections and collapsed into the Mississippi River, has spurred elected officials to consider neglected infrastructure.
“I think there is an increasing recognition among legislators that this problem has to be solved,” Draisen said. “The situation in Minnesota had a big impact on people’s minds. We can’t keep betting that nothing will go wrong, because eventually something will.”
In August, the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank, issued a study on the state’s failing infrastructure. “Our Legacy of Neglect: The Longfellow Bridge and the Cost of Deferred Maintenance,” details the Bay State’s failure to provide the necessary repairs to aging infrastructure statewide.
The responsibility for asset maintenance in Massachusetts is scattered across state government and riddled with redundancies and ambiguities, particularly regarding the practical responsibilities of the Division of Capital Asset Management and the various executive branch agencies, the survey noted.
Researchers found that maintenance spending from an agency’s operating budget will reduce program funds. While the postponement of routine maintenance maximizes operating funds, it also hastens the failure of capital assets. The eventual failure of the properties will result in an emergency disbursement of capital funds, which are under state control and will not impact the agency’s operating budget, the study said.
Researchers said the problem will not be solved in a single step. Rather, they say, it will require a sustained, multigenerational effort. The Pioneer Institute recommends that the state should stop building new assets without first examining and budgeting for their life-cycle costs, including regular maintenance; measure the condition of the commonwealth’s assets; and present easy-to-understand metrics of expenditures. Proper measurement of maintenance needs also will require changes to the state’s accounting system to allow easier tracking of maintenance, as well as the adoption of financial reporting standards that emphasize asset management, the study noted.
Other recommendations include creating a maintenance budget by requiring agencies to spend operating funds equal to 2 percent of asset replacement value on maintenance, establishing a Facilities Maintenance Reserve Fund and utilizing budgetary surpluses to perform pay-as-you-go maintenance.
Steven Poftak, one of the study’s authors, said the Pioneer Institute has not taken a position on whether casino revenues should be used to meet the demands of the state’s roads and bridges.
