Voters Split on Transportation Measures and on How Best to Pay for Roads
Voters in Maryland and Wisconsin said overwhelmingly they want a lock on their state’s transportation fund so the money cannot be spent on anything else.
By upward of 80%, voters in both states approved constitutional amendments backed by truckers to prevent governors and lawmakers from using the revenue from fuel taxes and vehicle registrations for anything but transportation.
But in a blow to transportation advocates in Massachusetts, voters there Nov. 4 repealed a tax law approved last year that would have raised millions of dollars for roads.
LIVE BLOG: Breaking election news
ELECTION SCORECARD: Who won and by how much
The law, part of a sweeping transportation funding bill cobbled together after two years of negotiations between Gov. Deval Patrick and the Legislature, indexed the state’s gasoline tax.
Meanwhile in Texas, truckers and other business groups persuaded voters to support a constitutional amendment that will allow the state to spend some of the tax revenue it’s reaping from the oil and natural gas on highways, but not toll roads.
Passage of the measure is expected to steer from $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion annually in revenue from the state’s rainy day fund to its road system.
In Louisiana, a ballot measure that would have paved the way for an infrastructure bank to help finance road projects failed by a wide margin.
Nevada truckers were celebrating the defeat of a measure there that would have put what backers called a 2% margin tax on businesses that grossed more than $1 million annually.
While there were no bond measures to raise money for transportation on state ballots this year, backers of the lockbox measure in Maryland said it was needed to protect the billions of dollars already flowing into that state’s transportation fund.
Lawmakers and Gov. Martin O’Malley agreed last year on a transportation funding plan that raised fuel levies in part by new sales taxes and fuel tax indexing.
In Wisconsin, truckers and others supporting the lockbox measure said they needed the protection before they could ask the voters to agree to higher levies that would support roads.
