Return taxing authority to states

The trouble with commissions, especially those related to transportation and taxes, is that their reports represent everybody’s wish list.

Take, for example, the final report of the National Commission on Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress. Since motorists are driving less, the gas tax should be raised by 10 cents per gallon and the diesel fuel tax by 12- to-15 cents per gallon, the commission’s majority concludes. The higher tax should, too, be put on automatic pilot to increase with inflation, a majority of the group recommends.

Here’s an example, though, of why commissions are little more than covers for politicians who want to take an unpopular action —- raising taxes, for instance.

“In addition to putting more money into the system,” the report declares, “we also must create a system where investment is subject to benefit-cost analysis and performance-based outcomes. We need a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly; one that provides a fully integrated mobility system that is the best in the world; one that emphasizes modal balance and mobility options; one that dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries; one that is environmentally sensitive and safe; one that minimizes use of our scarce energy resources; one that erases wasteful delays; one that supports just-in-time delivery; and one that allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.”

And then, to the disbelieving and to the confused, it adds this bromide:

“The good news is that we can do it. Our people need such a system and they deserve it.”

That bad news is that the to-do list contains so many mandates that none of them instruct. They’re the gibberish of assembled interest groups shouting out slogans for a facilitator to write on a blackboard. In the end, Congress has cover —- an urgent call for new infrastructure revenue because “the future of our Nation’s well-being, vitality, and global economic leadership is at stake” —- and everybody goes away feeling good that the bicyclists, and the road, rail and environmental interests have found “common ground.”

I promise you: there’s always common ground to be found when the various agenda-competitors find themselves on the wish list for somebody else’s money. When the lion and the lamb are forced to reach consensus, it is that neither will go hungry and that a third party provides dinner satisfactory to both.

As with an earlier version of the commission’s report, it is the minority report that warrants attention. It was offered by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and by two other Bush appointees, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary, and Rick Geddes, a Cornell University professor.

The surface transportation system’s greatest challenge is not connecting places or providing farm-to-market roads, but “the consistent, precipitous decline in transportation system performance and the increased politicization of transportation investment decisions,” the three write. “Throughout the recent history of our highway and mass transportation systems, engineering and political considerations have trumped economic ones.”

Their recommendation would not be to raise taxes, but to try approaches such as congestion-pricing based on time-of-day usage. That, which according to Brookings Institute economists, could yield $120 billion a year if applied in the 98 largest urban areas. Private-sector toll roads, charges based on vehicle miles traveled and real cost-benefit analysis with priorities set based on performance, are also among their suggestions.

They would, too, phase out the dominant federal role and the 18.5-cents federal gas tax except for “truly federal objectives, such as preservation and improvement of the Interstate Highway System,” interstate freight movement, safety programs, and projects of national or regional significance.

The latter argument is the most immediately compelling. Taxing authority should be returned to the states. State officials, and not Congress, should be making decisions about what projects are built where. The first money should be spent on improving major transportation corridors.

> Jim Wooten is associated editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

jwooten@ajc.com