I just returned from the Tarrant Regional Transportation Coalition meeting in Fort Worth. On the agenda this morning was a briefing from a variety of area state legislators on what we can expect on the transportation funding front during the 2011 state legislative session.
For those not aware Texas is facing quite a massive transportation crisis in not only the next several decades, but right on down to the very near future as our infrastructure deteriorates and congestion builds without adequate resources to address the needs. The really really big question is how do we pay for it? The answer we got today from our elected officials was "We don't really know and we're not really going to spend much time trying to figure it out during this legislative session because it most likely would require a tax increase of some kind and we would never get re-elected if we support that."
One representative suggested that if we ("we" was not defined) don't get the Governor and the Lt. Governor on board with the need to attack the issue then it won't get done. Now a lot of people may disagree with me about political philosophy, but I was under the impression that what gets done in a representative republic is what the people tell their representatives they want done and the process moves up hill. If our representatives don't have the guts to stand up among their peers and before the governor and state the issue than why are we re-electing them anyway? Especially if they all agree with the issue as much as they're telling us they do.
Being a suspicious fiscal conservative I'm not sold on the idea that a tax increase is necessary, but I wouldn't rule it out once the budget was vetted and some serious chopping was done. Our gas tax has not increased since 1991, but on the other hand much of that money has been diverted to non-transportation project and agency funding. We need to get Al Gore's "lock box" down here and put our road money in it.
A.J.
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