lion would widen almost 40 miles of Arkansas highways from two lanes to four lanes, Bennett said. Today, that same amount would widen 15 miles. The number of bridges that could be replaced with $25 million has fallen from 69 to 26 in that amount of time.
THE DEVIL WE KNOW Spear said the ATA believes the
simplest, most effective way of funding highways is through increasing the fuel tax. It’s a user fee, meaning the people using the government service pay for it, and it’s also “the devil we know,” Spear said. Members of Congress don’t want to raise any tax, particularly this one, because they don’t believe in raising taxes or are afraid of how voters would react. But Spear said 10 states recently
have approved a gas tax increase. And in his speech, Bennett pointed out that Arkansas is the only state where vot- ers had approved statewide highway programs two years in a row – the Interstate Rehabilitation Program (IRP), a bond issue passed in 2011 to improve and repair the state’s interstates, and the Connecting Arkansas Program (CAP), a half-cent sales tax passed in 2012 to construct four-lane corridors across the state. Between them, the IRP and CAP are resulting in $3 bil- lion worth of work, doubling the state’s construction program over the next few years. Unfortunately, Bennett said, those
two programs will only affect 4 percent of the state’s 16,416 miles of highways, the 12th largest system in the country. So the AHTD is focusing on what it calls the Arkansas Primary Highway Network, the one-half of the system that carries 90 percent of the traffic and 97 percent of the truck traffic. Like Congress, the state Legislature
was unwilling to find additional fund- ing for highways this past session. In addition to Douglas’ bill, the AHTD advocated for a bill that would have increased natural gas road taxes to the equivalent of gasoline over five years.
ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 3 2015
“WE DO HAVE A LOT OF COMMON GOALS. SOMETIMES WE MIGHT TAKE A LITTLE BIT
DIFFERENT PATH TO TRY TO GET THERE, BUT WE DO HAVE A LOT OF COMMON GOALS, AND
IT’S REALLY GOOD TO BE ABLE TO TRY TO WORK TOGETHER TO MEET THOSE GOALS.”
—SCOTT BENNETT, ARKANSAS HIGHWAY & TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT
It failed on the House floor because legislators saw it as a tax increase, not an equity issue. A bill that would have created a pilot program for a vehicle miles traveled tax passed the House Committee on Public Transportation, but the sponsor later pulled it. Complicating the matter is that
raising the fuel tax in the Legislature requires a 75 percent vote – a high bar. In fact, when Bennett asked if confer- ence attendees would be willing to pay a dime more per gallon to produce $150 million in road revenue, he noted that less than 75 percent appeared to raise their hands.
WORKING ACROSS THE AISLE Spear, who earlier in his career
was on the staff of former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyoming, contrasted today’s Congress with the one where he worked. Simpson and his fellow Republicans worked with Democrats like Sen. David Pryor of Arkansas. Congress annually produced a budget and passed 13 appropriations bills and numerous authorization bills. Many members of today’s Congress, on the other hand, have never seen regular order. Sent to office by a divided elector- ate, they cannot cross the aisle in a way
35
Scott Bennett, director of the
Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, discusses the need for highway funding from Congress
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