San Benito County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Margie Barrios recently reported on the 2015 Advocacy Priorities adopted by the California State Association of Counties (CSAC). Near the top of their list was the improvement of transportation infrastructure, but to be more accurate – and this is critically important – the exact proposal was “New Revenue for Transportation Infrastructure” which is certainly not the same thing.
Improving transportation infrastructure leaves open the possibility of using the entire management toolbox to accomplish the stated goal; restricting the process to finding new revenue, as CSAC did, demonstrates the major psychological flaw in California’s government outlook – the unwillingness to take on the exploding costs of public services.
County administrations throughout the state are not going to do a thing about excess costs foisted off on the state’s taxpayers by delays, featherbedding, administrative overhead and prevailing wage laws that even make it illegal to seek lower labor costs. They would much rather fight the taxpayers who have shown themselves to be easily panicked and swayed by inane ads and sloganeering than the hard-nosed business and labor interests who might cost the politicos some real votes.
The CSAC proposal went on to discuss in detail “to identify and evaluate viable new revenue options to replace and/or augment the gasoline excise tax (gas tax) for transportation infrastructure investments.” These included, “mileage-based road user charges…a replacement revenue source to pay existing and future transportation bond debt service…” [And, as always] “…reducing the voter threshold for local transportation sales tax measures” among other taxpayer unfriendly proposals. Increasing the registration and licensing fees were also on the table at CSAC according to the Chairwoman’s report.
Imagine yourself in private industry and your management team comes around asking you for ideas to fund capital improvements and maintenance, but they give you one restriction, no cost cutting allowed. It would not happen because cost cutting is one of the most efficient ways to improve one’s financial position, 100 cents of every dollar saved is used whereas so-called revenue enhancement involves additional costs and the risk of unintended consequences [reference higher gas mileage and electric cars].
In January 2015, California had the second highest state gasoline taxes in the nation; 36.0 cents per gallon (cpg) in excise tax and 9.39 cpg in “other state taxes and fees” related to gasoline for a total of 45.39 cpg. That is 51.8 percent higher than the national average of 29.89 cpg. Given those numbers and the state’s population it’s hard to believe that California is not taking in adequate gasoline taxes. Over the last 20 years California gas tax has far outpaced the inflation rate. The tax was 16 cpg in 1993; adjusted for inflation that would equal 26 cpg in 2013, but the actual tax was 39.5 cpg.
Public road lengths by state are categorized by rural or urban and by ownership. California has 81,000 miles of rural roads, 13th longest and 94,000 miles of urban roads, 2nd longest in the U.S. Together, California has the second longest road network in the nation; however, this does not take into account the “lane miles” or the population those lane miles support.
When it comes to lane miles per capita, California is near the bottom of the pack with a total of only 0.011 (using the 2010 census figures). We are only trailed by 3 entities, New Jersey, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia. The national average is 0.047 lane miles per capita; on a population basis California has very little roadway.
This is especially a problem because California has nearly twice as many registered private and commercial automobiles, 13.6 million, than the second place state, Texas, with 7.8 million. After Florida, 7.3 million, the numbers drop dramatically. New Jersey, in 8th place, has only 3.6 million private and commercial automobiles; Hawaii less than 600,000. California also has more than 224,000 publically owned automobiles, more than 13 million private and commercial trucks, 321,000 publically owned trucks, 33,600 private and commercial buses and 59,000 publically owned buses. That’s more than 28 million vehicles in all.
The combination of a high vehicle count and low lane miles per capita results in exactly what you see, overcrowded and poorly maintained highways. The other critical factors are how much is spent and how quickly and efficiently the work is done.
In 2012 California spent the second largest amount for state-administered highways, $9.1 billion, 4.7 times the national average. Only Texas, $12.6 billion exceeded that number. But California had the largest year-end balance highway reserve fund by far, $24.4 billion.
The non-partisan Reason Foundation’s 21st Annual Highway Report ranked highway conditions and cost-effectiveness for state-owned roads and California came in at number 45 out of 50.
It’s obvious that California’s highway builders, maintainers, and political leaders never heard the old adage that time is money. In fact nationwide, the relative costs have skyrocketed. Per the report, “Since 1984, these per-mile disbursements have increased over 330 percent, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has increased about 121 percent.”
2012 Capital and bridge disbursements in California exceeded $219,000 per state-controlled mile (scm), sixth highest in the nation. Maintenance was $102,900 per scm, second highest, and administrative costs were more than $48,000 per scm, fourth highest.
California’s weighted average was $501,000 per scm while the nation’s weighted average, including California, was $161,200 per scm. If California reduced its cost, now 3 times the national average, to twice the national average, we would increase the road capital and maintenance miles by 50 percent with no additional taxes.
At the end of 2012, California was carrying 15 times the average in state highway reserve fuds and more than 3 times the reserve of any other state. The money is there, the truth is that our current rules, regulations, and political philosophy prevents us from making good use of it. Pouring additional billions into a broken system won’t fix it; it will merely generate more cost and waste.