[Themaintainers] Infrastructure Update: Debate over using 'road money' to pay for police

Tue Feb 8 15:52:37 EST 2022

Money going in does not equal money received.

Jonathan Coopersmith
Professor
Department of History
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843-4236
979.739.4708 (cell)
979.862.4314 (fax)

America's "stab in the back"myth:

https://theeagle.com/opinion/columnists/unnerving-similarities-to-jan-6/article_3c85d7d4-6e80-11ec-8411-f3f7258ee938.html

Preserving space archives:  https://www.toboldlypreserve.space/

International standards battles:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/history/lets-thwart-this-terrible-idea-for-standards-setting
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From: Route Fifty’s Infrastructure Update <news at e.routefifty.com>
Date: Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 2:46 PM
Subject: Infrastructure Update: Debate over using 'road money' to pay for
police
To: Jonathan Coopersmith <j-coopersmith at tamu.edu>

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Route Fifty’s Infrastructure Update February 8, 2022
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The collapse of a Pittsburgh bridge late last month, which occurred just
hours before President Biden arrived in town, not only reinforced the
president's message that the nation needed to upgrade its infrastructure,
it also reignited a debate over how Pennsylvania spends its gas tax money.

The taxes motorists pay to fill up ostensibly go toward maintaining the
state's roads and bridges. But that doesn't mean the money is all going to
construction and maintenance. A big chunk of it in Pennsylvania actually
goes to pay for state police, something that the construction industry
wants to change.

Pennsylvania is an especially blatant example of this. It has one of the
highest state fuel taxes in the country, and one of the biggest percentages
of "road money" going to pay for law enforcement. But almost every state in
the country has similar arrangements to fund police and, despite occasional
controversies, that doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon.

Hello, and welcome back to *Route Fifty's *Infrastructure Update. I'm Dan
Vock. This will be the last weekly edition for a while, but we will
continue to bring you the latest infrastructure news in our daily
newsletter. Today, we're going to look at why the diversions have become
such a hot political issue in Pennsylvania and why, despite inevitable
backlashes, states stick with similar systems.

The January collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh revived a
long-running debate over the way Pennsylvania uses road funds. In 2019,
then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale found that the state diverted $4.25
billion
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in road funds over seven years to pay for state police. The money had been
raised through fuel taxes and fees for driver's licenses and vehicle
registrations.

States use about 9% of their transportation money to spend on law
enforcement, but that varies widely by state, according to federal data
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Pennsylvania is the eighth highest among the 48 states that specifically
set aside transportation money in a separate account. It dedicated 15.9% of
its transportation money for law enforcement in 2020.

Delaware, by comparison, used a third of its transportation money on police
and safety. Ten states diverted 1% or less for that purpose.

Jeff Davis, a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation and the
editor of the *Eno Transportation Weekly*, said that state funding for law
enforcement from transportation has been remarkably stable. It is
essentially unchanged since at least 1980, and probably further back.

In fact, Davis noted, states have used motor vehicle-related charges to
offset administrative and safety expenses even before they started
collecting gas taxes a century ago. They started collecting registration
fees in 1899, "and from the beginning, some of that money was used to
offset DMV costs," he said.

That said, Davis said the differences among states in how much they use
their gas tax and motor vehicle fees on state police was striking.

"It seems like all states do about the same level of traffic enforcement.
It's not like Pennsylvania has 10 times as many state patrolmen out on the
road there" as other states, he said.

But it's the ongoing funding issues – not the performance of the state
police – that has brought the issue to the fore in Pennsylvania recently.

Last week, several groups from the Pennsylvania construction industry asked
Gov. Tom Wolf to stop sending transportation money to police.

"It's time to restore faith in our state budget process by ending the
diversion of motorist fees to non-highway purposes and find new ways to
fund the Pennsylvania State Police," they wrote in a letter
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.

That approach would free up more money for roads, which is especially
important now that Biden's infrastructure proposal has become law. For
Pennsylvania to get its full share of money available under the law, it
will have to raise another $1 billion to pay its portion of federal
matching grants, the contractors and pavers noted. They argued that
Pennsylvania should look for ways to pull together the money without
raising taxes, especially because Pennsylvania has the third-highest
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state fuel tax rates in the country.

Pennsylvania state lawmakers in recent years slowed the amount
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of road money heading to the state police. But they've also had trouble
keeping up with the increased demands on the state police, which had to
take over patrolling in small cities that can no longer afford
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a police force.

Last year, Wolf called for Pennsylvania to phase out the gas tax
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and appointed a commission to look at how to do so. The Democratic governor
said his state was "relying too much on outdated, unreliable funding
methods" to pay for transportation improvements.

The commission proposed many sweeping changes in its report last summer
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Its ideas included moving to a mileage-based tax, increasing fees, adding
tolls, and, of course, ending diversions of transportation money to fund
the state police.

The proposal never gained traction in the Republican-controlled
legislature. So when the diversions became an issue again after the bridge
collapse, the governor's office blamed inaction by the GOP lawmakers.

"Throughout this administration, the governor has proposed various ways to
address state police funding, none of which have been supported by the
Republican-led legislature, nor have they proposed sound funding
solutions," his office said in a statement to a Pittsburgh TV station
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"The Republicans continue to block our efforts to address this critical
issue."

That's it for this week's edition. The Infrastructure Update newsletter
will be on hiatus for a while. In the meantime, if you haven't already,
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