Proposals to get additional money for road and bridge repair that both Democrats and Republicans agree is needed died in the Legislature Monday night when neither party was willing to compromise on their preferred method for raising the cash.
Democrats and a bipartisan coalition on the Transportation Committee were pushing a $60 million federally backed bond with a $24 million interest price tag. Republicans had countered the plan with one to use surplus income and sales tax revenue, diverting it from the rainy-day and other savings accounts.
In the end, neither plan had enough votes to get through the full Legislature, largely because leadership from both parties had agreed not to support transportation bonds this year.
“Everyone recognizes the concerns and the needs…and still we’re at an impasse,” said Rep. Boyd Marley, D-Portland, the House chairman of the Transportation Committee.
“It’s purely politics,” he said. “We want to have an issue to run on rather than doing what’s right.”
The politics boiled down to a deal among Senate President Beth Edmonds, Minority Leader Sen. Paul Davis, House Speaker John Richardson and House Republican leader, David Bowles. The crux of it was that in exchange for Republican support on the supplemental budget passed earlier this year, Democrats would agree not to float a transportation bond. Republicans have made it a campaign issue that the state is too heavily in debt when un-funded liabilities like state employee pensions are in the mix.
Democratic leaders stuck to that deal, but didn’t control their members. The Democratic chairmen of the Transportation Committee launched their own campaign for the bonds and many rank-and-file Democrats followed their lead.
Republican leaders held their members together on the bond vote, but grabbed a political way out by advocating the use of surplus taxes to fund transportation projects.
Ultimately the bond vote died in the House Monday evening in a 62 to 80 vote, and the Republican amendment to use surplus funds never got a chance to be introduced in the Senate.
Rep. Edward Mazurek, D-Rockland, a member of the Transportation Committee, cautioned his fellow House members Monday that the voters would not understand why the bond failed.
“We do a lot of work up here, and people back home don’t have any idea what we’re doing. But, they do know about roads,” he said. “Their cars hit the bumps and potholes.”
“Put aside party politics and do something that’s right for the people of Maine,” he urged.
The need for additional road funds surfaced last year after the federal government released its highway budget outlining how much each state would get in aid. While the total was up from previous budgets, a higher percentage of projects than usual were earmarked – meaning money had to be set aside for those projects – and construction costs have skyrocketed with the price of oil.
Despite various budget maneuvers, including transferring $15 million from surplus state revenues, the highway fund in Maine is still short $60 million – a number both sides said could go up due to the heavy rain damage in York County last week.
Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Hancock County, the Senate chairman of the Transportation Committee, finally conceded defeat on the Senate floor Monday night.
“We’re all very aware of the needs finally, but what we haven’t been able to do is to come to an agreement on how we pay for them.”
The projects that have been delayed because of the budget will be done eventually, he said, but when they are, “they will cost more than if we did it today.”
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