Letter to the editor

The Moore American

September 19, 2007 12:03 pm

— Dear Editor:
Will Rogers warned that Americans might be the first nation in history to go to the poor house in their automobiles. ODOT Director Gary Ridley seems determined to make certain.
Will said a lot of smart things – like, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to quit digging.” Ridley and state legislators would do well to take heed – but they’re in "the hole business.”
Under the spell of former state transportation secretary Neal McCaleb and his friends at “TRUST,” or “Transportation Revenues Used Strictly for Transportation,” Ridley – who still refers to McCaleb as “the secretary” – continues to seek ways to further rob the public to repair roadways overwhelmingly damaged by ever-increasing hordes of heavy commercial trucks.
Oklahoma Tax Commission reports show that in recent years, trucking has paid only around 25% of annual fuel tax revenues received by the state. According to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a standard 18-wheeler operating at its heaviest legal gross weight (80,000 lbs) inflicts pavement damage statistically equivalent to 9,600 automobiles. But thanks to Oklahoma legislators from McCaleb’s time as ODOT director and transportation secretary, big diesel trucks pay three cents per gallon less state fuel tax than automobiles pay, and it should be noted that the diesel penny produces only about one-third the revenue of the gasoline penny.
The obvious tie between fuel burn and any vehicle’s time on public roads is fairly obvious, offering a hope of cost recovery in proportion to damage. However, thanks to too many state legislators who at least “appear to be easily led” by highway contractors and others who benefit from bad roads, the fuel tax baseline has been crippled, ensuring that the public gets stuck with most of the cost and that roads continue to get worse not better.
How “easily led” are these legislators? Far too many blankly chant "TRUST's" mantra, that the 2005 defeat of State Question 723 “proved the public doesn’t want fuel taxes raised.” This is a “conclusion” apparently engineered by McCaleb and his sidekicks, highway engineer Bob Poe and truck stop king Tom Love – known as “TRUST” today, but formerly called “Oklahomans for Safe Bridges and Roads,” the outfit that ginned up the State Question. They didn’t ask whether the public wanted just the trucking industry’s fuel taxes raised – and they knew very well the public rightly thinks it already pays enough to cover trucking’s sins. In short, they evidently designed the question to get the answer they wanted.
What were they really after? The same thing they sought earlier in the decade, calling themselves “Oklahoma Good Roads and Transportation.” They want state tag and registration fee revenues to go to road repairs – knowing full well that those dollars are property tax on motor vehicles in no way enabling proportional recovery of road damage. Trucking pays less than 10% of total tag and registration fees. The public pays the rest.
What happens when people whose vehicles don’t significantly damage roads are forced to pay for truck-inflicted damage? What does trucking do with money it should have had to repay for road use? Obviously, it buys more trucks – absolutely guaranteeing worse roads next year than last. Between 1996 and 1999, truck traffic on Oklahoma roads jumped from 5.6 billion annual miles to 13.4 billion. There’s no way the taxpayers can afford to keep up with road and bridge maintenance under such hammering.
Think about it: Without bad roads, the state’s highway contractors are out of business.
We’ll know Gary Ridley and the rest of state government is serious about better roads when they carefully charge big trucks what they should be paying. Until then, they’re just deepening the hole we’re already in.
Some will complain that this will “raise the price of consumer goods.” To the contrary – it will take transportation costs out of the realm of taxation, where consumers have no choice but to pay it (even if they don’t realize it), and put it in the price of goods in the competitive marketplace where we all have a choice. If market competition works at all, this will drive innovation in transport likely moving more truck trailers and containers to railroads and off public highways for long-distance moves.
There are obvious answers to our road problems, both in Oklahoma and nationwide. Trouble is, bureaucrats and elected officials have been very careful to avoid asking the right questions. Will Rogers wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that our leaders and their friends are still in “the hole business.”

Tom Elmore, Executive Director
North American Transportation Institute
PO Box 6617
OKC, OK 73153-0617