Roads Less Traveled: How the state steals our highway cash

A Legislative Column by Assemblyman Dave Townsend (R,WF-Sylvan Beach)

Last week Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported a robbery. In an official study conducted by his office, DiNapoli revealed that only 39.9 percent of New York State’s Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund went to repair and improvement projects since 1991. The balance was used to pay off general state operating expenses and to service New York’s rapidly ballooning debt over the last 18 years, the comptroller reported. Because of this shortfall, three major projects in Central New York that were scheduled to receive funding as part of the state Department of Transportation’s 2009 Five-Year Capital Plan have either been abandoned or delayed until new money can be found, a difficult if not impossible proposition given New York’s higher-than-expected projected budget deficits for the next several years. The comptroller estimated that we will need $3.9 billion to plug the gap. It appears our highway lockbox has been looted ever since Sheldon Silver got hold of the keys.

Governor Paterson has already called the capital plan too expensive; the infrastructure of our state is therefore likely to suffer further. While Paterson and his downstate special interests continue to raid the Highway and Bridge Trust Fund the number of creased and pockmarked roadways will only increase. Our bridges will continue to slide into disrepair, threatening public safety and causing more delays and detours for the average commuter. Meanwhile, the 2009-10 state budget hiked the cost of driving by 25 percent, raising registration fees for vehicles and hiking the cost of new driver’s licenses – even making new, more expensive license plates mandatory for all drivers next April. The governor’s Division of Budget called on this $681.4 million in projected revenue to be deposited in the state’s general fund.

Upstate New Yorkers pay at least 32 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes, excluding county levies. A percentage of this money is supposed to end up in the trust fund, a cache established in 1991 to pay for construction and rehabilitation of state-owned roads and bridges on a year-to-year basis. Beginning in 1994, however, this model was altered to pay for the back-door borrowing of the Thruway Authority – essentially the state paying itself back for properties sold to cut budget overruns. Covering these increasingly massive debts has become an ever-larger role for all state revenue, including the highway trust fund: between 1993 and 2009 debt service payments grew by 577 percent. The upshot of this fiscal mismanagement, according to the comptroller’s office, is a 21 percent decline in all capital projects by 2013. This will include the Route 3 bridge over Oswego Canal ($14.7 million); the Route 5 bridge over Seneca Canal ($12.5 million); and the Interstate 81 viaduct in Syracuse (not funded). By 2013 federal stimulus money will have dried up, just like the state’s coffers. Once again, Upstate taxpayers are paying for downstate overspending.

Transportation issues remain critically important to our region’s economic future. But unchecked spending at the state level has contributed to a debt that is swiftly eroding our transportation funding. Without reforming New York’s Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund, our local economy will have been driven off a cliff.

Roads Less Traveled: How the state steals our highway cash

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