Are Michigan lawmakers shooting at the wrong target in the road funding debate?

Administrators estimate that they can get 90% of aid-eligible roads into good or fair condition by fiscal year 2034-35 if taxpayers spend an extra $2.5 billion annually. This has been endorsed by a number of interest groups.

Lawmakers have asked for even more. The governor has proposed a series of tax hikes to raise $3 billion for roads. House members approved bills that would devote more than $3 billion to roads without raising taxes. It moves money from the state’s expensive and ineffective business subsidies to road repair, which is a better use of taxpayer money.

That’s a lot of money. It would increase the amount of money for roads coming from state taxes by 68%.

Getting to an arbitrary quality level by an arbitrary year ought not be the goal of transportation policy, though. Lawmakers have an obligation to keep roads in good working order, and that obligation doesn’t come with a deadline.

State and local governments own the roads and are responsible for them. Even though the state owns only the heavily-used highways (the I-, US-, and M-designated roads), the bulk of funding comes from the state budget, not from local governments. There are local property taxes levied by a number of local governments for road repair, but the state transportation budget determines the majority of road funding.

Roads aren’t the only thing in the budget. Lawmakers set their priorities in the budget process, where they divvy up the public’s money among many different demands. Getting roads into better shape gets weighed against alternative uses for taxpayer money.

What lawmakers ought to shoot for is to spend enough on roads so that they are repaired faster than they fall apart. That ensures continual improvement in road quality.

In other words, the goal should be above-replacement levels of funding. They can weigh the benefits of improvements beyond that goal to see if those are worthwhile, but the standard of success is long-term improvement.

Lawmakers used to be close to this goal. They were fixing roads at roughly the same rate as they deteriorated when Gov. Whitmer was elected. It shouldn’t have taken much — surely not the $2.5 billion proposed — to be successful. Yet a dispute over whether to raise taxes in order to get to state goals left the state at a stalemate.

While the debate has focused on funding, costs matter just as much. The state was able to get to its 90% quality target in the 2000s when transportation funding was 35% lower, adjusted for inflation. Either administrators aren’t as effective as they used to be or road construction cost less back then. It’s probably the costs, and it would help to allow market pricing when requesting bids from contractors.

Disputes over the best way to fix roads have derailed deals in the past. And who knows whether lawmakers are going to agree on a new proposal. Maybe they’ll negotiate to get to their 90% quality goal by 2034-35, but it will be successful if their deal gets roads fixed even a little faster than they fall apart.

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