By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Some Northwest Arkansas lawmakers worry that a state
panel created this year to find a new source for funding state highways
will not address what some view as the most pressing issue — how the
state Highway Commission currently allocates money to road projects
across the state.
They want the bulk of the funds to flow to population centers with
the most traffic, and not split equally among regions of the state as
the Highway Commission has done for years.
But Sen. John Paul Capps, D-Searcy, chairman of the Arkansas Blue
Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance, said that view does not take into
account the panel’s true purpose or the reason why the current road
funding system is in place.
The Legislature this year created the highway committee to research
and recommend a new funding source for highway construction in the face
of ever increasing road needs and diminishing returns from fuel taxes
as gas prices prompt drivers to travel less.
The 19-member panel will consider a number of highway funding
options, including raising property taxes, increasing state fuel taxes
and tapping general revenue.
It is to submit recommendations to the Legislature and Gov. Mike
Beebe by July 1, 2010, in advance of the 2011 regular legislative
session.
But divergent views on the panel’s role and calls for a change in
the way funds are distributed pose a potential roadblock to building
the consensus necessary to pass the first state highway funding program
since 1999.
That year, the Legislature raised gasoline and diesel taxes to fund
state highway improvements as part of then-Gov. Mike Huckabee’s $575
million plan to improve the state’s crumbling interstate highways.
Voters later in 1999 approved a bond program to fund the interstate
construction, to be repaid with future federal highway dollars.
“Voters in Pulaski County and Northwest Arkansas are not going to
vote for any (new) funding source (for state highways) as long as the
distribution of the funding is this bad,” said Rep. Mark Martin,
R-Prairie Grove, who wants the new highway panel to recommend changes
in the way road funds are distributed.
“That is diametrically opposed to the real charge for this
committee,” Capps said. “We’re not out there to tell the Highway
Commission where to spend the money. They know where to spend the
money. This is an overall plan for overall money for the highway
department.”
Gov. Mike Beebe said he, too, would prefer highway money follow the
traffic, but he said funding distribution was not the road committee’s
responsibility.
“I prefer that the money follow the cars, reserving obviously, the
right in some economic development purposes to weigh against that,” the
governor said. “I’ve tried to impress that on our commissioners.
Obviously, there is some resistance to that.”
Regardless, the highway panel was not created to address the issue, he said.
Martin attended the committee’s June meeting and sat at the table,
though he is not a member of the panel. He spent much of his time
chronicling the meeting on his Internet blog.
After hearing presentations that suggested the state highway system
is in pretty good shape compared to others in the region, and that some
regions of Arkansas have more needs than others, Martin wrote, “That
means what we have is regional needs, but don’t need large scale
statewide investments.”
He also wrote that Arkansas voters “will support highway funding if the fairness in distribution is addressed.”
He said later pressing regional needs should be targeted first.
“The committee has not addressed looking at those regional
differences in need or asked what would be the best way to pay for
those needs,” he told the Arkansas News Bureau.
Instead, he said, the panel appeared more worried about developing a
study that can later be used to “convince voters to vote for whatever
funding they come up with, before they even establish a funding source.”
During the meeting, committee member Bill Fletcher of Hot Springs
said there must be “something to present to the mass of the public that
you can put on TV and be understood in 30 seconds.”
Other committee members agreed, saying that whatever they propose
will have to be later presented to Arkansans for their approval.
Capps said the panel’s narrow focus is to develop a new statewide
source for supplementing highway funding, period, and that the study
discussed at the June meeting would only be used when the committee has
its proposals completed and takes them to various areas of the state
for public input.
In May, state Highway Director Dan Flowers told the panel that
revenues from fuel taxes have been flat for years and the state is
seeing a decline in that revenue stream. He said it would take about
$200 million more annual just to maintain current road conditions.
Former highway commissioner Ron Harrod of Little Rock, who
represented Southwest Arkansas during his 10-year tenure on the panel,
said changing the way the commission distributes highway funds would be
dangerous to some areas of the state.
“If you pull the money and let the money follow the traffic you
abandon half the system,” Harrod said, noting that nearly 50 percent of
state roads handle about 80 percent of the traffic.
“What would happen, you couldn’t get crops out of eastern Arkansas
because the farm to market system, where they bring the grains to the
driers and all of that, would be mud if they weren’t maintained,”
Harrod said.
“In Southeast Arkansas, you wouldn’t have any roads for farming or
timber, in Southwest Arkansas you couldn’t get the logs and pulpwood
out.”
The big question, Harrod said, is “do you want all the roads
maintained, or do you want those without (heavy) traffic to pay for
their own maintenance?”
If the blue ribbon committee can find an adequate funding source,
there would be funding for all roadway repairs, he said, adding, “the
money right now just isn’t there.”
Highway Commission spokesman Randy Ort acknowledged that highway
needs in the populous, traffic-congested central and northwest parts of
the state are not being met. Neither are the needs in agricultural
eastern and southern Arkansas, where farmers are troubled by narrow
bridges and roads with no shoulders, he said.
“It’s not because of the distribution in funds, it’s because we
don’t have the money,” Ort said. “No one is getting what they need.”
Another concern of some lawmakers is representation on the
five-member highway commission to which gubernatorial appointees serve
10-year terms.
Rep. Donna Hutchinson, R-Bella Vista, complained that while
congressional district lines are redrawn every 10 years to take into
account population shifts, boundaries for the state’s 10 highway
districts have remained the same since 1935.
As a result, Hutchinson said, the 4th District, which spans from
the Mississippi border to the Texas and Oklahoma borders across
southern Arkansas, is represented by all five of the highway
commissioners while most of the 3rd District in the northwest corner of
the state is represented by just one commissioner.
But Ort said Hutchinson and others do not understand that a highway
commissioner does not just represent a specific region of the state.
“Each commissioner advocates for two districts and each district has
the same number of highway miles,” Ort said. “The commissioners
represent the whole state.”