Re: State sounds alarm over road funding

On Jul 30, 8:44 pm, Rich Piehl
<rpiehl5REMOVETHIS...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pigsty1...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 30, 7:54 pm, Rich Piehl
<rpiehl5REMOVETHIS...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/s...

orhttp://tinyurl.com/2aac3y

From the July 30, 2007 St. Louis Post Dispatch. Link rot in about 10 days.

Missouri's top transportation official is canvassing the state talking about a "perfect storm" forming over his department.
Road construction costs are spiking, debt payments are ballooning, and at the same time, fuel taxes are generating slightly less cash and the federal highway trust fund is speeding toward a multibillion-dollar deficit.
The combination means that by 2010, the Missouri Department of Transportation could have just $569 million a year to pay contractors for road and bridge work. That's down from the $1.23 billion that MoDOT is spending this year on those jobs.
Click the link for the full article.

Take care,
Rich

God bless the USA
--
And if I claim to be a wise man
it surely means that I don't know.

--Kansas

So, Rich, I have stated many times how I feel, lets hear your
suggestion,

Randy

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a sure fire solution. And
you'll also notice I've stayed out of the other recent discussions of
the topic.

But for the fun of it I'll run through the steps as I see them...and let
everyone blast away.

First, obviously gas consumption is dropping and will continue to drop
because the price of oil is continuing to increase. If something would
happen and oil would jump to $125 bbl we could see $5-6/gal gas overnight.

Tax breaks associated with ethanol production and use only exacerbate
the problem, and we can't produce enough ethanol to get us off foreign
oil. It's a short term feel good solution that will do nothing to fix
the problem long term.

Alternative fuel vehicles have a similar problem. They'll still need
and use the roads, but they will provide minimal contributions to the
road tax.

But the road tax is symptomatic of the larger problem - our gawd awful
tax system. Created over a century it reminds me of a long-in-
the-tooth computer program. Need it to do something over here, stick on
a patch. Want an additional feature over there, put in another patch.
Pretty soon the program is a giant jalopy that functions, but is so
clunky and cumbersome that it runs like a Model T. Yeah, it still gets
you where you're going, but it backfires as it goes, and has trouble
making the hills and you gotta' get out once in a while and hit it with
a hammer. But technically, it still works. But nobody wants to tackle
the behemoth of replacing it because our current government leaders have
no spine and are too tied in to special interest groups, and are more
interested in getting elected than fixing problems. Nobody wants to
tackle coming out with a completely new from the ground up version of
the software.

The solution...scrap the entire tax system as it stands. Gas tax,
income tax, property tax, real estate tax, the whole shebang. Local,
state and Federal. Go to a flat tax. One rate for citizens and another
higher one for corporations. Implement a similar, lesser flat tax at
the state level, and at a county (parish) and municipal level. Use it
to cover roads, schools, national defense, social programs, civil
protection (police, fire, ambulance, etc).

The only exception would be there would be a fee based structure to
administer certain things like hunting and fishing licenses, marriage
and drivers licenses, business licenses, a few things like that. Cap
their fee based on the population of the issuing authority, so there's
$500 resident fishing license nonsense.

Couple other changes to aid the system. Term limits and line item veto
(for Federal and State)..

You asked....how's that?

Take care,
Rich
(slipping into his asbestos underwear to ward off being flamed)

God bless the USA

--
And if I claim to be a wise man
it surely means that I don't know.

--Kansas- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It is not anything I have not heard before. It is not ignorant, it is
reality based, so what are you worried about?

But I do disagree. A flat tax is inherently reqressive, that is its
main problem. IOW the less you make, the higher percentage you pay.
That is what is so regressive about sales taxes. Poor people pay a
higher percentage.

Now is it your feeling that transportation be funded out of general
revenues? If it is I will disagree with that also.

Transportation is NOT education. That is the reason the gas tax was
instituted initially, so that transportation was funded by the users.

Term limits is not the solution you think it is. A constant turnover
in a legislature, federal or state is NOT a good thing. You lose the
good people with the bad. There are elections every two years, why
should the electorate be told who they can and cannot vote for solely
because they have served a certain length of time.

Let the electorate decide, that is what democracy is about right?

Randy

.

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