By Bill Davis | There are more moving parts in the deal to get new roads funding passed in the legislature than there are in a watch, and time is running out.
With only nine work days left in this year’s legislative session, some are wondering if the General Assembly will even get to pass a bill on the state’s $40-billion-and-climbing roads deficit.
While the House passed a new roads funding bill last month, the Senate is snarled in a political knot over other pending issues that have procedural priority over what some are calling the most important issue of this session.
Sitting next on the Senate agenda are bills related to abortion and tweaking the state’s Capital Reserve Fund. That means precious time next week has to be spent on them before roads funding can be dealt with.
And even then, it’s going to be tough because passage of the state’s budget also looms.
Late last month, the House passed a roads funding bill that calls for a 10-cent increase in the state’s gas user fee. The dime increase falls short of the DOT’s request for more than $1.4 billion annually to get the state’s road system up to “good” in the coming decades. Raising the per-gallon fee to 26-cents also falls short of state regional gas taxes.
But Gov. Nikki Haley said in her State of the State Address in January that she would veto any roads funding bill fueled by a gas tax increase unless there was a corresponding cut to the state’s income tax rates. Haley has called for a 2-percent cut in the income tax rate that would drop it from 7 percent to 5 percent. She has also said the executive branch, namely her, should take over on setting the state’s contentious roads project building priority list.
In the Senate, a Republican-led plan piggybacks on the House bill, but includes a higher per-gallon increase, gives Haley and the executive branch nothing in terms of roads projects governance, and reduces the amount of income tax decrease from 1 to 2 percent, and phases it in over five years. A smaller and less controversial part of the roads funding package would be the increasing of fees, such as for driver’s licenses and the like.
An opportunity
State Sen. Paul Campbell (R-Goose Creek) said this year may be the legislature’s best chance for years to deal with roads funding “because next year is an election year.” 2015 was the rare year when there were no elections for House, Senate or statewide offices.
Campbell said election years make it much more difficult to even contemplate increasing the gas tax, even though it is technically a user fee, and a big chunk of the load would be shouldered by cars from outside the state. He also said his caucus’ offsetting plan would be better than revenue neutral, as it would result in a $100 million overall tax reduction annually in 2021 when it would be fully phased in.
But, he said, he doubts there will be much interest from Senate Democrats because the income tax reductions’ fiscal impact wouldn’t be as much for their constituents as they would for some Republican voters.
State Sen. Joel Lourie (D-Columbia), point man on the other side of the aisle after serving on the original subcommittee looking into the gas tax increase, said “no one is calling me up asking to reduce their tax bill – they’ve calling me up to fix the roads they drive on.”
Lourie agreed that the income tax cut was a non-starter with fellow Democrats. He called for separate bills that weren’t joined at the wallet, taking away the offsetting cuts for the gas increase.
“Going back to my freshman year in the House, we have never had a dedicated funding source for roads – it’s time we did,” said Lourie, who said his colleagues don’t want to give the governor power over the priority list, either.
But, Lourie said, the “good news” was that both sides were finally talking about the issue and that once the Senate agenda is cleared “the public will get the debate they deserve.”
For all the seeming obstacles, the debate could be welcomed by the Republicans, who seem to be in a win-win situation, especially if they can reduce income taxes on the wealthy, who would benefit the most directly, and smooth over the roads the wealthy drive their tony cars.
But can Spartanburg GOP Sen. Lee Bright, who in the past has called for the state to print its own money and eschew the federal dollar, be dealt with? He could continue his filibuster over the abortion bill and further eat up precious legislative time.
On Thursday, a motion failed to remove Bright’s abortion bill from the docket, meaning it will be held over for interrupted debate on Tuesday. Then there’s the Capital Reserve Fund tweaking. And then the resulting package would have to pass muster in the House, and a certain conference committee vote between both chambers, and survive a potential veto slash from Haley, who has shown signs of compromise since her staunch January speech.
All that. In nine days.
“We can always include it in a sine die resolution,” said Campbell, referring to a procedural maneuver that allows the legislature to reconvene after its scheduled end date to debate and potentially overcome gubernatorial vetoes and deal with specific items and pieces of legislation.
So, instead of “kicking the can down the road” until next year, an election year, the legislature may end up waiting to vote on roads and gas tax rates until late June.
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