43-4-1101. Short Title. The short title of this Act is “Fix Our Damn Roads.”
— from the official text of Ballot Initiative 167 (now Proposition 109)
Some of our readers may have noticed the press release submitted by the Colorado Municipal League (CML) which we included in yesterday’s Daily Post. (You can read it here.) Coloradans will have a whole slew of ballot measures to vote on, come November — here in Archuleta County, we could possibly have as many as 14 measures to vote on — and the CML Board of Directors decided to take an official position on four of them.
Two of the four are Propositions 109 and 110 — the transportation-related measures that we introduced yesterday in Part Two. Both measures were successfully petitioned onto the ballot earlier this month.
Two different approaches to solving Colorado’s serious transportation issues. A good one, and a bad one. Unless they are both bad.
Let’s start with the truly bad one: Proposition 109, also known as “Fix Our Damn Roads.” On the face of it, 167 might seem like a great idea. It proposes to address 66 specific highway projects that might qualify for federal highway funds (if such funds are available.)
17 of the 66 proposed projects are slated for the ‘Greater Denver Area Transportation Planning Region, while eight projects are planned for the ‘Southwest Transportation Planning Region.’ (That’s us.)
But some projects are much bigger (and more expensive) than others, as this map suggests:
As we see, many areas of the state have no planned projects. One of the projects is listed as:
US 160 PAGOSA, RECONSTRUCTION TO CORRECT WHEEL RUTTING AND ADDITION OF PEDESTRIAN FACILITIES FOR SAFETY;
About $23.7 million is earmarked for this particular Archuleta County project. The most expensive of the 66 projects involves adding new lanes to I-25 North between State Highway 7 and State Highway 14. It clocks in at $653 million.
You can view all the proposed projects in this PDF document28_FiscalImpacts_Initiative167.
For some voters, the most attractive part of the ‘Fix Our Damn Roads’ proposal will be: that it doesn’t raise taxes. But that’s exactly what’s bad about it. It will require the state government to put itself $5.6 billion in debt (counting interest payments) without providing any new revenues to repay the debt. So the bond payments will necessarily come out of other General Fund programs. (Education? Health Care? Law Enforcement? Fire Departments? Roads?) Investment bankers will make out like bandits, while the rest of us will probably see state services cut.
You can read the full text of the ballot measure here.
Proposition 109 does not allow the funds to be spent on mass transit, which is — in the end — the most affordable type of transportation, and the type used so effectively in rest of the civilized world.
It’s possible the voters will approve Initiative 167 based primarily on the fact that it create raise new taxes. But as we all know, there’s no free lunch. If we want better roads, we have to pay for them…
…or else, expect our children and grandchildren to pay for them, on our behalf. This is the approach proposed by 109. Spend now, and pay later. (We all know what approach the investment bankers prefer.)
Then we have Proposition 110, another chance to spend money on transportation. This one does, indeed, raise taxes, in the form of an increased sales tax. The initiative was backed by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and the Colorado Contractors’ Association.
The ballot measure is tied to Senate Bill 1, which was passed during the 2018 legislative session. That bill provides $495 million from the 2018-19 budget for transportation projects. The ballot measure would continue the funding, by establishing seeking a 0.62 percent state sales tax increase — that is, an increase of about 6 cents on a $10 purchase. This tax increase could conceivably provide funding for around $6 billion in new transportation bonds, for road and bridge repairs around the state.
But it will cost the taxpayers about $9.4 billion, when we count the interest payments on the bonds.
Unlike Proposition 109, this proposal does not specify where, exactly, the money would be spent. It also allows money to be spend on mass transit and ‘multi-modal transportation.’ And unlike 109 — which will fund only Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) projects — Proposition 110 earmarks 40 percent of the new funding for municipal and county transportation projects.
The issue committee tied to the proposal — Coloradans for Coloradans — raised $1.37 million to get the initiative onto the November ballot. The construction industry was the biggest contributor, at $693,000. The committee hired eight different petition firms to collect signatures for this initiative, according to an article published last month on the Colorado Politics website.
From the draft ‘fiscal impact analysis’ published by the Colorado Legislative Council:
Bond repayment. Total transportation bond repayment costs may not exceed $9.4 billion, and debt must be serviced within 20 years. Based on assumed repayment costs of $9.4 billion over 20 years, the average annual debt service costs will be $470.0 million. Table 3 compares the potential bond repayment cost with sales and use tax revenue from the measure.
You can download that fiscal analysis here.
As we can see from the analysis above, this little program to fix our transportation systems under Proposition 110 will be extremely lucrative for the folks who purchase the bonds. The analysis estimates the “bond debt service” at $470 million in fiscal year 2019-2020.
Nearly 60 percent of the new taxes collected that year will go towards servicing the debt…
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.