In a dramatic turnaround, the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives has approved a $2.4 Billion transportation funding package,
only a day after voting it down (good summary story here). The bill passed the Senate in June by a
bipartisan 45 – 5 vote, but has been hung up in the House, where anti-tax
Republicans seemed content to let Pennsylvania lead the nation in structurally
deficient bridges rather than increase any taxes or fees (sound familiar?).
Governor Tom Corbett, who’s approval ratings are underwater,
didn’t shrink from the fight and pressed hard for the measure, including bringing
in former governors Ed Rendell, Tom Ridge, and Mark Schweiker to speak for it. PennDOT Secretary Barry Schoch put
together a “Decade of Investment” project list and posted weight limits on
1,000 bridges to dramatize the problem.
The politics got pretty crazy toward the end. The sweetener
to get Republicans on board was an anti-labor provision that increases the
exemption from state prevailing wage rules for projects from $25,000 to
$100,000. However, the sweetener
for Republicans was also a poison pill for many Democrats. The cause appeared
lost Monday night, when the House voted the bill down, but several Republicans
were persuaded to switch by Tuesday, no doubt with interesting stories behind
each switch. In the end, the bill
passed 104 – 95, with a small majority of Republicans voting aye and small
majority of Democrats voting no.
Of course most transportation funding votes these days have
complicated politics, the details of which vary from place to place and time to
time. The takeaway here, I think,
is that bipartisan funding votes really are possible.
The Pennsylvania bill (which I should point out still has
more hurdles to get across) raises several taxes and fees, with the largest
revenue coming from removing the cap on a wholesale fuels tax, which will
effectively, in a few years, increase the motor fuels tax by about 25 cents per
gallon.
The plan includes a robust increase in funding for transit
and multi-modal programs (air, rail, bike/ped) and some structural reforms, but
doesn’t go as far as many of us would like (my earlier comments here).
I think we have to score this a big victory for
transportation funding.
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