LV to help find a way to pay for roadwork

Three from area will be part of group considering how to fund projects without gas tax

Three Lehigh Valley leaders will be at the center of a new commission that will explore ways to fund Pennsylvania’s cash-hungry transportation network, which is reliant on an increasingly flawed gas tax.

State Sen. Pat Browne, R-Allentown; Becky Bradley, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission; and Pattie Cowley, executive director of the Easton-based Pennsylvania Bus Association, are members of the new Transportation Revenue Options Commission. Gov. Tom Wolf hopes to phase out the state gas tax, and he created the commission to reimagine how the state will maintain its highways, bridges, public transit, airports, pedestrian walkways and ports.

The bipartisan 45-member group held its first meeting Thursday. The first session spelled out the scope of the challenge of what’s increasingly being described as a crisis. While PennDOT has an $8.6 billion budget for the 202021 fiscal year, it has an additional $9.4 billion of projects it can’t address.

The collection of legislators, labor leaders, lobbyists, planners, PennDOT officials, construction executives, bureaucrats and community advocates is scheduled to present recommendations by Aug. 1. PennDOT has proposed creating models based on tolls or a congestion tax, but some Republican lawmakers have pushed back on the idea. Pennsylvania has also toyed with an experimental vehicle miles traveled tax that tracks where motorists drive, and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has expressed openness to the concept at the federal level.

Not all members are sold on the tolling plan. In an opinion piece published around the state in February, Cowley warned tolling would devastate the tourism and motor coach industries that are already reeling from COVID19. In an interview Friday, Cowley declined to discuss alternative funding

sources she prefers instead but said she was optimistic an answer could be found.

“I think the fact they’re putting all different areas of disciplines into the commission, you’re going to get a solution,” she said. “We’re remaining open-minded and being part of the process.”

Bradley was not available for an interview because of a personal matter. However, she and the planning commission have raised concerns for years over Pennsylvania’s diminishing funds for transportation. In 2019, the state was forced to move funding out of repairing state-owned highways and bridges and into the interstate system. While the decision hurt many Pennsylvania communities, the Lehigh Valley was hit harder than most. New projects are now in store for Interstate 78, but the end result is still a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements for the region. Critical projects on Route 22 and Route 33, two of the region’s busiest roads, were pushed back decades or put on indefinite hold.

“Based on the funding we expect to have, we can’t find a way to fund them even in the back end of a 25-year plan,” Bradley said in a Morning Call column in May.

Browne may be the most powerful person on the commission. As chairperson of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a member of Republican leadership, his support would be crucial to whatever recommendations emerge in August. In an interview Saturday, he declined to discuss any solutions he found promising, saying those conversations should begin with the commission first.

A document PennDOT provided commission members noted strategies other states use, hinting at more possibilities. Maryland, for example, uses a share of its corporate income tax to pay for transportation infrastructure. Michigan relies in part on its motor vehicle sales tax. Massachusetts motorists pay higher fees for their driver’s licenses.

But Browne pooh-poohed some of those options. Pennsylvania already uses those tools to fund items like education, corrections and human services, and he is unwilling to rob Peter to pay Paul. Pennsylvania’s corporate income tax is already one of the highest in the country, making another hike unlikely, he noted.

While other legislators have opposed PennDOT’s proposals to create tolls on bridges and highways, Browne said he’s willing to discuss it. He’s chafed at the department’s efforts to create tolls without input from the General Assembly but acknowledged tolls are widely used in other states and are worth exploring.

“To say that tolling as a sustainable source of revenue wouldn’t be appropriate at this stage of the commission, I just wouldn’t be willing to say that right now,” Browne said.

One thing that’s certain is that the gas tax won’t increase. State lawmakers raised the gas tax in 2013, and it’s the second highest gas tax in the country. However, officials knew then it wouldn’t be enough to bridge Pennsylvania’s funding gap, a divide that has grown worse over time. The federal government hasn’t increased its gas tax since 1993, and the pandemic drove down tax revenues by cutting the number of vehicles on the road.

Soon, gas taxes may be entirely outdated. Engines have become more efficient over time, and some rely on alternative fuels, meaning less revenue to repair crumbling bridges, widen highways and fill potholes. That will only get worse as auto makers such as GM, Ford and Volkswagen invest heavily in electric vehicles. GM intends to only offer electric vehicles by 2035.