Pay as we go

How to fix the state’s highways

Every few years Arkansas’ taxpaying voters and drivers have been adopting stopgap programs to fix the state’s washboard roads. Back in what now seems long-ago 2011, the electorate approved a $575-million bond issue to finance $1.2 billion’s worth of work on the roads that were part of the interstate system of highways. The next year, 2012, voters tired of bumping along approved $1.8 billion for road work on selected stretches of highways important to regional development. And now Governor and builder-in-chief Asa Hutchinson has put it plain in a speech to the state’s Economic Development Commission:

“In my view, we need to bring a highway plan to the voters in 2018 and put it on the ballot and give the voters an opportunity to develop a highway plan. So I hope that y’all will be open to that.” Which would be fair enough — and responsible enough. Let the people rule.

Or must Arkansas wait for a bridge to collapse or a major crash before finally taking action? Which was the frightful scenario outlined by a couple of highly responsible state legislators, Representative Dan Douglas of Bentonville and Speaker of the House Jeremy Gillam of Judsonia, the day before the governor spoke.

Both of those luminaries deserve more than a hearing; they deserve a following when it comes to this state’s deteriorating roads. So does Governor Hutchinson, who noted: “As you drive around the farm-to-market roads, the overlay that we need to have in rural Arkansas is critically important, so though we have enhanced our highway funding with $200 million more in [federal] funding with the state match [of some $50 million], we still need to have more for a long-term highway plan.”

And it’s thinking in the long term that so often has been lacking when it comes to highway planning and financing in this state. As exemplified by the aginners who are always making the perfect the enemy of the good by holding up some unattainable, only theoretical goal as an alternative to what can be done now.

Some lawmakers said they opposed Douglas’ literally constructive bill during the legislative session in part because ending the current 6.5 percent exemption on the sales tax when it comes to gasoline and motor fuel in general would be the same as about a 22-cent tax increase if and when the price of gas went to $4 a gallon. (It’s now about 2 bucks a gallon.)

Well, that’ll be the day when inflation is eliminated from the economy.

And while we’re arguing about what the price of gas could be in 5 or 10 years, the state’s highways continue to crumble.

Conclusion: It’s time this state did something about its roads, not just debated about them.