November 19, 2006

The Road To Traffic Congestion is Paved With Bad Fiscal Policy

The Tennessee Department of Transportation says it will have $2 billion less than it needs over the next 10 years to build or expand the roads as needed to accomodate the growing population, reports the Sunday Tennessean. $2 billion over 10 years is $200 million per year. Though there's no mention of it in the Tennessean story, at least part of that funding gap can be directly attributed to Gov. Phil Bredesen who, four years ago, in order to "balance" the state's budget in his first year in office, diverted some $60 million in TDOT's gas tax revenue per year to the state's general fund. There's $650 million over the next ten years, or rougly a third of TDOT's funding gap. Until that $60 million in diverted gas tax revenue is restored to TDOT's budget, the public and its lawmakers should reject any calls to increase the gas tax or find/create new sources of revenue for TDOT.

This blog post from 2002 - and the Nashville City Paper column it links to - are worth reading now that TDOT has begun screaming for more money: GARVEEs a route to sensible TDOT budget