Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990 TAG: 9003133447
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/4 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: WALTER R. MEARS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
At least no new federal taxes.
The latest catalog of administration aims was the new transportation policy proposed last week, featuring 169 guidelines and 65 legislative objectives, by Transportation Department count.
"It's time to act, and it's time to give our state and local governments the flexibility that they need to best use federal funds," Bush said.
The amount of federal money they get to use flexibly is another matter; Democratic governors like New York's Mario Cuomo said state and local governments have been paying a steadily increasing share of transportation costs for the past 10 years.
Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner said the states want more authority and responsibility over the use of transportation funds, and should have it. "But we're also going to ask them to come up with a greater share," he said.
The transportation blueprint, and the instant dispute about financing highways, airports and mass transit systems, produced a replay of the debate over education reform measures.
Last month, the administration embraced an education reform plan based on six goals and 21 more specific objectives, drafted by governors after Bush's 1989 education summit.
Democrats complained that the administration wasn't proposing enough federal school aid to back its endorsement of reform. House Speaker Thomas Foley said the administration budget recommends a 2 percent increase in federal education spending, but the gap is too big for that. "We don't have a 2 percent problem," he said.
In each case, the administration has set ambitious goals for reform and improvement in a costly and vital facet of American life, to put things right by the year 2000. In each, the cost has been left to be filled in later, with resources to be found elsewhere.
Dealing with education, the administration maintains that more money won't buy reform, that it is going to take changes in the way children are taught and schools are operated. Bush said he would seek increased flexibility in the use of federal aid, with increased accountability on the part of the states.
The same offer is built into the transportation policy.
But there is a basic difference: Reform won't rebuild roads, bridges or outdated airports. That takes money, and a lot of it. Public and private estimates put the cost of rebuilding the American infrastructure at well over $3 trillion. Furthermore, the federal government historically has had a far greater role in transportation than in education.
The administration blueprint basically seeks to have state and local governments, and the people and businesses using transportation facilities, take increasing responsibility for the cost of repairing them and running them.
"I think we feel that state and local governments have not provided a sufficient amount of infrastructure funding," Skinner said.
In a variation on Ronald Reagan's old theory that Washington should cut both spending and taxes and leave more of both to the states, the administration argued that increases in federal transportation levies would foreclose state decisions.
"And if the federal government were to raise the gas tax, it would eliminate, or it would basically preempt state governments from raising their gas tax," Skinner said.
He said 33 states have increased their gasoline taxes or taken other steps to create special funds for transportation facilities in the past three years. Skinner said that shows the states are willing to do it. But Democratic Gov. Wallace Wilkinson of Kentucky, where the gasoline tax already has been increased a nickel a gallon, said the states are running out of options. He said it would be impossible for him to ask for another gas tax boost.
The administration plan also says restrictions should be relaxed so that state and local governments can raise transportation funds in other ways, including the use of highway tolls and airport passenger charges. It urges efforts to get private business and investors involved in building and running transportation facilities.
Washington, the new policy says, is to concentrate on collecting user fees "as the key element in financing the federal share of transportation expenditures."
That fits the no-new-tax game plan. Bush budget advisers said from the beginning that user fees don't count as tax increases, even though the people paying them may not always see the difference.
by CNB