SC Trucking Association’s Todd: Veto override may be only road to roads fix

Piecemeal funding for South Carolina’s roads was provided in 2013 from budget redirects, appropriations and one-time surpluses. But long-delayed maintenance, and needed major upgrades will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than can be taken from existing state funds.

The basic road needs are a fiscal reality. A large coalition of statewide associations and local chambers of commerce with personal and business road-user constituencies has confirmed this by objective, rational analysis, and we represent groups that dislike taxation as much or more than any.

The debate is further complicated by politically inseparable issues such as “reform” of the structure of the Department of Transportation, reducing the number of roads the state is responsible for and tax cuts.

But after sober assessment, we assured the Legislature that we support the current system of user-fee-based financing of road infrastructure — because businesses and citizens demand services and have been willing to pay for them when the fees are direct, dedicated, fairly apportioned and efficiently administered.

It’s been an entire generation since our citizens agreed to pay more for the use of our road system. Our current user fees do not adjust for inflation, unlike other tax revenues that ride up with values/prices. Hence, the buying power of these user fees has been greatly diminished, and we are now literally paying the price for inaction, in a myriad of other ways.

Adjusting these user-fees would provide the investment capital required for more modern, safe and efficient road systems that serve our citizens and their commerce.

So, we urge legislators to act on this initiative in this 2015 session. Because if they don’t, it likely will be years before they can. Here’s why.

Early next year, our state will be one of the Republican presidential primary epicenters, and big-money groups will be here ginning up their bases, railing against federal government spending. They will flood our airwaves, confusing voters while intimidating our local elected officials.

Next year is also a re-election year for our legislators, and conventional wisdom holds that “taxing” issues are too hot for even normal election cycles. The most active tax protesters are the vocal minority, technology-enabled and energized by out-of-state-financed organizers. We’re already getting robo-calls and other messaging attacking the gas tax and our conservative legislators who are willing to tackle and resolve this important issue. We should not allow them to hijack an issue that so directly affects our quality of life.

Without action this 2015 legislative session, the governor will beat up on the General Assembly as a whole, and select individual legislators in particular, for “not fixing our roads, not cutting taxes, and the good-old boys taking back control of the DOT Commission by sunsetting the secretary’s post.” Even though it’s a win-win-win for her, it keeps the status quo for our roads. That should be unacceptable to everyone.

Cutting taxes, while well and good, is most difficult because every group, profession and occupation is a special-interest group, with its own tax preferences. Adjusting road-use fees strictly for road improvements should be separate and distinct from this larger debate. Up to now, it always has been.

We think a better solution is compromise. But if they can’t reach a compromise yet are still are able to find a way to pass a good road-fix bill only to have it vetoed, they’ll have to muster a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate for an override. That’s the Legislature’s prerogative as the people’s directly elected representatives.

In some respects, with a veto override, everybody wins. Our roads will finally get the long-overdue attention they need, the legislators will demonstrate that a super-majority accepted the challenge and bit the bullet collectively, both the Legislature and the governor can check this off the state’s priority to-do list, and the governor’s quest for fiscal purity is preserved: She can blame the legislature.

We urge citizens to press their legislators to immediately take up the mantra “I Voted to Fix Our Roads in 2015.”

If they do, we could truly say to our citizens and industry: “It’s a great day in South Carolina.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2015 at 12:00 PM with the headline "SC Trucking Association’s Todd: Veto override may be only road to roads fix."