Transportation Bills Lack Traction With Idaho Legislature
Idaho senators apparently have no appetite for transportation funding proposals this session.
The Senate on Feb. 18 shot down a funding bill for the second time this week. Both failed by a nearly 4-to-1 margin.
The latest bill would have authorized the Idaho Transportation Department to issue as much as $100 million in Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle EE, or GARVEE, bonds to purchase right of way along certain highway corridors. The bill sponsor, Sen. Chuck Winder (R-Boise), said the intent was to help acquire the land before prices soared, and to speed up construction and improve safety.
"I know some will say they have GARVEE fatigue and they don't like borrowing, but when you count lives, this is significant," said Winder, a former Ada County highway commissioner and former Idaho Transportation Board chairman.
The state has issued about $840 million in GARVEE bonds since 2006, using the money to make improvements along seven critical highway corridors. The projects helped drive down accident rates and cut the number of fatalities from 13 to one over three years.
"That's a dozen lives saved because of the improvements to those corridors," he said.
Several of his Senate colleagues, however, questioned whether buying real estate - and borrowing money to do so - was the wisest use of the state's limited transportation dollars.
"What I end up weighing is whether we're going to address a dangerous situation or just spend this money buying something we may not use right away," Sen. Jim Rice (R-Caldwell ) said. "To me, that's not the right way to go."
Sen. Steve Vick (R-Dalton Gardens) noted a bill was presented a few years ago saying GARVEE funding was needed to repair the state's aging network of bridges.
"I'm wondering how this priority came about, how this [right of way] is the best thing to use GARVEE for," he said. "We didn't pass [the bridge] legislation, but maybe that's a more important use of this money."
The idea of buying right of way, potentially years before the state is ready to proceed with construction, also bothered Vick.
"When we do this, when we buy land with the assumption that it will only go up in value, to me that's land speculation," he said. "I don't know that that's a business the state should be in."
Winder said land speculation is when you buy land in hopes of selling it at a profit.
"This isn't about making money. It's about saving money," he said.
Nevertheless, the Senate killed the measure on a 26-7 vote.
That was almost the same vote recorded Feb. 16, when a measure to remove $16.7 million in dedicated funding from the Idaho State Police budget failed on a 27-8 vote.
The dedicated funding comes from the state fuel tax. The intent was to shift the money to the transportation department for highway maintenance and repairs while backfilling the state police with general fund dollars. However, lawmakers rejected the proposal because it put more pressure on the general fund and made state police funding more uncertain.
One other transportation funding bill has been introduced this session. It would remove the sales tax on gravel and other construction materials used to build public roads, thereby making the projects a little less expensive.
The proposal would cost the state an estimated $9.5 million in sales tax collections; cities and counties would lose another $1.2 million. That bill is still in committee.
