Mission creep and newspeak

ransportation” no longer means what you thought: roads and bridges. It now means whatever planners want it to mean, now or in the future.

Colorado’s roadways are terrible, there’s no other way to put it. The state legislature has purposefully ignored this core function of government. Purposefully? Yep. When the state embraced Obamacare, it expanded Medicaid some 368 percent until nearly 1 out of every 4 Coloradans are now on the dole. Of course, the honest and respectful thing to do was to ask voters if they wanted to fund this massive, ever-growing entitlement. Knowing the voters would soundly reject it, the legislature did it anyway because, you know, politicians.

Bait-and-switch works. To pay for Obamacare, they’re squeezing other core functions of government that we do support, like roads, until they bludgeon us into a tax increase for that instead. A decade ago nearly 10 percent of the general fund budget went to roads. Today that’s getting closer to 6 percent. Translation, get ready for “transportation” tax increase to pay for Medicaid.

As if disguising a Medicaid tax hike as a transportation fix isn’t ripe enough, they’re changing the meaning of “transportation” itself.

Until 1991, the Colorado Department of Transportation was called the Department of Highitant This well-defined title helped fight the natural mission creep that governments crave. But it seemed a harmless enough bit of public relations to change it to the softer “Transportation.” Heck, the federal Department of Defense is cuddlier than its previous name, the Department of War, and that has helped expand their mission too.

So, it’s little wonder we still equate “transportation” with “roads and bridges.” But mission creep, like cancer, can grow so slowly you just don’t notice it until it’s too late.

In 2009 the legislature passed a vehicle-registration tax, avoiding asking voters for permission as required by our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights by, again, labeling it a “fee.” While you’d think “fees” raised from your cars, campers, motorcycles and all trailers big and small would go to the roads you drive them on, they don’t. The so-call FASTER fee helped move CDOT’S focus away from alleviating traffic congestion to behavior modification.

So, just what are your car taxes now paying for? Most silly of all is CDOT’S Bustang regional bus service to compete with privatesector bus services like Greyhound. Like your optometrist starting a hair-dressing salon since they both deal with things on your head, the department that specializes in laying asphalt is now operating sleek-looking buses from Lamar to Pueblo to solve our traffic jams.

At least $5 million of your car taxes have gone to the cronies working the Union Station renovation. Millions to a fixed-guideway feasibility study on Interstate 70 that voters previously shot down. You’re paying for 36 “commuting solutions kiosks” for nearly $1 million, bus benches, replacements for the Durango Trolley, new buses for towns all over the state, and rail improvements for RTD, because RTD just doesn’t have enough money,

Bicycles. Did I mention bicycles? The car tax you didn’t get to vote for is paying for bike paths, bike-sharing programs like those in Denver and Boulder, and for $56,800 in Summit County, two bicycle racks, which for that price must dispense free cocaine or something.

Today our former Department of Highways is on course to not only become a statewide train and transit agency, but the central planner of feel-good bike programs, pedestrian paths, para-transit for the handicapped, open space, and cronyism.

Just so you know the newspeak, if you’re talking about roads, you best never say “transportation.” Say “roads” or you’ll be part of a ploy to use our rage over crumbling highways to promote a brave new world of mission creep.

Jon Caldara, a Denver Post columnist, is president of the Independence Institute. He is a former chair of the Regional Transportation District’s Board of Directors.