I’ve heard some bad arguments against gas tax indexing, and Tom Keane makes two of them in the Globe today.
Take away lawmakers’ easy way out on gas tax – Opinion – The Boston Globe.
First, I really wish that the “magic” of compound interest were not such a novelty to allegedly informed journalists:
The compounding effect of annual inflation increases can prove quite large. If automatic indexing had been in effect since 1991 (when it was 21 cents), for example, the gas tax today would stand at a whopping 36 cents.
Um, yes, that’s true. But the whole point of indexing is that 36 cents is precisely as “whopping” as 21 cents back in 1991.
To be fair, Keane says that families don’t get an automatic increase in cost of living. Well, yes and no. Wages do rise over time, but not equally. Inequality is rising, and that working class wages have not kept pace with inflation. That’s the actual problem, then, isn’t it? That would require a different column from Keane, which would fit less neatly into the simple anti-tax narrative.
Secondly, Keane bafflingly asserts that by indexing the gas tax, the legislature has somehow “delegated” its authority to tax, and is escaping the political ownership of such marginal increases. (And he drops some serious knowledge by quoting John Locke! DAMN!)
This is plain silly. The legislature owns whatever it writes. And if it owns the teeny increases in the gas tax, then it also surely owns the condition of roads and bridges as well. This has been quantified! $1 billion a year, and we’ve known about it for some time.
So for all of Keane’s hand-waving about how the problem is overstated, well, prove it. His personal skepticism is not actual evidence.
Save basic economic literacy. Keep the index.
Addendum – This is so obvious it smacks one in the face: Your sales and income taxes are already adjusted for inflation because they’re percentages. Thanks commenters.
nopolitician says
Gas prices in 1991 were $1.14. The 21 cents represented 18% of the price of a $1.18 gallon.
A tax of 21 cents now represents just 6 percent of the price of a $3.50 gallon – less than the current 6.25% sales tax. If the tax rose at the same rate as a gallon of gas, it would be 65 cents per gallon.
The legislature clearly failed at their duty to keep this tax in line with both inflation and expenses. Why should they get to keep playing the game?
I don’t understand why people think that we should be able to pay for our roads with the same pot of money that we had 25 years ago. This should be a no-brainer.
topper says
Massachusetts has the 44th worst roads in the nation yet spends among the highest per mile. Might a case be made that the “revenue” is paying for staff and not road work?
stomv says
I’d love to read more about this. Got any citations?
HR's Kevin says
That “worst” category is largely *because* of its spending. Its not that MA is 44th in road quality, we are not. In fact, the quality of the road surfaces is quite good relative to other states.
The study in question is from the “Reason Foundation”, an ideological Liberterian think-tank. So it is not surprising that they largely focus on cost rather than actual quality. There are also some strange anomalies in the data that should make one question the studies methodologies. For instance, how does MA go from 1% rural interstate in poor condition in 2007, then 30% in 2008 and back to 1% in 2009? Clearly, this is shoddy research.
See http://reason.org/files/20thannualhighways-ma.pdf
topper says
I see. And we all know that libertarian think tanks make things up. They have only issued this report for 19 years.
To allay fears of the vast right wing conspiracy, we can turn to the hyper partisan nuts at the American Society of Civil Engineers who note:
•Driving on roads in need of repair costs Massachusetts motorists $1.461 million a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs – $313 per motorist.
•42% of Massachusetts’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition.
•Massachusetts has 36,177 public road miles.
•Massachusetts’s highway vehicle-miles traveled in 2009 was approximately 8,293 per capita, ranking it 43rd in the nation.
•Massachusetts’s gas tax of 23.5 cents per gallon has not been increased in 21 years
493 of the 5,120 bridges in Massachusetts (9.6%) are considered structurally deficient.
•2,214 of the 5,120 bridges in Massachusetts (43.2%) are considered functionally obsolete.
Have fun with this, Kev.
stomv says
that gives roads a D- or whatever. Their standards are remarkably high though — not just structural, but throughput. Traffic on a bridge? The bridge is obsolete. No consideration that maybe, just maybe, the communities don’t want their roads to become superhighways.
For ASCE studies, I’d encourage you to compare MA to other states that have old infrastructure and see how the Commonwealth compares. By ASCE standards, are MA roads and bridges better, the same, or worse than NY, NJ, CT, or RI?
topper says
Kicking the can here? Kind of an old infrastructure in the states to our north. Why leave these ones off your selective list?
The larger point is that rewarding incompetence with increased taxpayer funds when such funds are clearly squandered and yield subpar results is why we are in the mess we are in. You can twist and turn on this all you want but the results are clear.
stomv says
The list is indeed selective — based on states that likely have similar transportation infrastructure to Massachusetts with respect to age and type. Transportation infrastructure is heavily influenced by the population density of the area. Consider the population densities of US states, ranked from most dense to least:
1 New Jersey 1,210 people/sq mi
2 Rhode Island 1,017.1
3 Massachusetts 858.0
4 Connecticut 742.6
7 New York 417.0
21 New Hampshire 147.8
31 Vermont 68.0
Massachusetts is almost six times more dense than NH, and more than 12 times more dense than VT. On the other hand, it’s only twice as dense as NY, and rather similar to NJ, RI, and CT with respect to density. Importantly, the places I list all have significant metropolitan areas, with downtowns, that are rather old by American standards, whereas NH’s metro areas are more sprawling suburban, and Vermont doesn’t even have that.
You haven’t established that the results are subpar (hence the request for a comparison), nor that the funds are clearly squandered. Infrastructure is expensive. It’s more expensive where right of ways (ROWs) are narrow, congested, and heavily used. It’s more expensive in places with higher wages. It’s more expensive in places with cold winters and a construction season that doesn’t last 12 months.
You can assert that the money is wasted, or you can try and demonstrate it by comparing MA’s expenditures to those of states with similar transportation infrastructure. You seem to be using proof by assertion — and I’m not buying it.
fenway49 says
Those states have far less population and urban density, but just as many road problems:
Vermont:
Vermont comes out slightly worse than MA, which may be why they raised the gas tax to 26.7 cents (almost 3 cents more than ours) this year.
New Hampshire:
Apparently less pocketbook hit for the motorist, but even more roads in poor repair. Which is why NH raised its gas tax this year as well.
topper says
Well friends, let’s go back to the cost per mile. Sorry to quote the Reason Report which you all seem to loathe but I don’t have the luxury of excess Google time and I don’t see any inaccuracies – “Massachusetts ranked 48th or 49th in total disbursements per mile, administrative disbursements per mile, which includes money spent on administration, research and planning, and capital bridge disbursements per mile.” These metrics don’t have anything to do with population density, width of the road, snowfall, climate change, or anything else. They point to mismanagement which is why I and many others are loathe to give the Beacon Hill gang anymore without proof that it is spent wisely and prudently. And by all reasonable measures it is not.
SomervilleTom says
1. Various reports show that our infrastructure is in terrible shape
2. We lack the tax revenue to repair our maintain our infrastructure (hence [1] above).
3. We should therefore refuse to increase our tax revenue.
The horrific condition of our infrastructure is a reason to RAISE taxes.
It’s no wonder the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters reject foolishness like this.
topper says
1. Various reports show that our infrastructure is in terrible shape
2. We have the tax revenue to repair our maintain our infrastructure and we spend it lavishly on administration and staff.
3. We should therefore refuse to increase our tax revenue. And we shouldn’t index the wasted tax increase to inflation. That makes the problem worse.
The horrific condition of our infrastructure is a reason to spend taxes on highway projects, not administration.
It’s no wonder the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters reject foolishness like this.
SomervilleTom says
Your number 2 is a statement of fact. Your added language in item 3 suggests that you are focused on a different “problem”. The problem we are discussing HERE is our failing infrastructure. The problem you are apparently referring to in your addition to 3 is your personal phobia about paying taxes.
Your item 2 is a statement that is unsupported by every budget document and objective external analysis for decades. If you want to make that claim, then the onus is on you to cite, in the current Massachusetts budget, the line items where you allege the astronomical cost of repairing our infrastructure can be found.
I think you’re just repeating a Hannity-Limbaugh-Carr talking-point. I see no evidence that you’ve ever even SEEN, never mind analyzed, the state budget.
I think you are articulating nothing more than pure self-centered greed.
centralmassdad says
To get there, you have to conveniently forget
1. the never-ending stream of “isolated incidents” in which this or that state employee is collecting multiple salaries and/or pensions at the same time;
2. everything that was revealed at the probabtion department trial. I don’t care that this is a different department– government is government.
3. I drive on the turnpike often enough to notice that I wind up in toll traffic to get through the EZPass lane, only to find that there is a greater number of “cash” lanes open– and unused– than there are EZPass lanes. In 2014.
Hard to give our state government any credence on this point. Are you really expecting some kind of infrastructure improvement if the tax stays indexed? Or are you expecting everything to stay exactly the same, and to be arguing in a few years time that we simply MUST raise more revenue to improve the maintenance on our decrepit infrastructure?
usergoogol says
This is a point which I think needs to repeated over and over again. Most taxes people pay are taxed as a percentage of the value of whatever is being taxed, which means they are “adjusted for inflation” without any action needing to be taken. If prices go up, people pay more sales tax, and more property tax. If wages go up, people pay more income tax. But hardly anybody thinks that setting taxes as a fixed percentage is an automatic tax increase.
But for various reasons, gas taxes aren’t structured this way, but instead are taxed per unit of gasoline. Which is perhaps the sensible way to go, since gasoline prices can be far more volatile than the rest of the economy. But completely ignoring price changes is just bad policy.
If the Yes on 1 people just wanted to be straightforward and say that they want to remove the peg to inflation because they just want to pay less in taxes, that would be fine. I disagree, but it’s a perfectly valid argument to want to pay less in taxes. But the whole taxation without representation argument is just specious nonsense.
Al says
I just want the legislator to make a conscious decision to raise it and own it. This is just a way to get the increased revenue without taking responsibility for it.
stomv says
sales and income taxes go up every year, and the legislature never votes to raise ’em. That’s the joy of establishing the tax as a percentage, so it tracks inflation spot-on.
Why should the gas tax be any different? Does the price of roadway materials not go up over time? How about living wages? How about the cost of funding retirements, health care, or post-employment health care? When all of those costs stop rising with inflation, it will make sense to not index the gas tax to inflation.
centralmassdad says
In theory, if the legislature needs more money because the cost of roadway construction materials has increased, great– then there is a good reason and argument to be made. But if the legislature needs more money because they created too many “jobs” so that people they know can “work” at the Probation Department, well then there isn’t.
In theory, the need to make an actual vote to increase the tax on X is an opportunity for those explanations and questions to be answered, whereas automatically increasing taxes is a great opportunity for those questions to be ignored. Unfortunately, in practice, these questions are ALWAYS ignored, regardless.
So I guess this is a great taxation/economic argument, but the practical reality is that little of the extra funds so raised will actually translate into improved infrastructure maintenance.
jconway says
CMD shows you how to make an anti-index argument in an informed way.
That argument is the #1 reason progressives have to stop making excuses for DiMasi, DeLeo, Coakley, the gang that brought us casinos, the DCFS, the connector fiasco, and be in favor of eliminating police details as well as automatic the tolls. The editors have consistently been on the side of good governance on those issues and many others, but its time the entire movement, particularly its elected officials, be more vocal about it. We shouldn’t need Republicans to check hackery and corruption, the part that favors stronger government should always be able to make the case that the government we already have is working at its best capacity. It clearly isn’t in MA, and it will likely cost us the Corner Office this cycle.
centralmassdad says
This not happening is the essence of the “progressive-hack alliance” in Massachusetts.
It works like this from the hack perspective:
1. Make noises liberals like to hear.
2. Win primary, and then run un-opposed in general.
3. Ignore the liberals, unless they get uppity, in which case make noises that they like to hear, throw sops as and when necessary.
4. Co-opt liberal legislators if possible, and use “party discipline” procedures to undercut any liberal legislator who is not voluntarily co-opted.
To the extent that liberal voters begin to agitate against you, then it is time to bring out the trusty “You don’t want to empower the Tea Party Republican Extremists, do you? DO YOU?” Then make soothing noises and throw a sop if necessary.
jconway says
It seems like it’s not entirely true at the state level.
I haven’t seen them make noises liberals like to hear or co-opt our legislation. The discipline thing seems to be a bigger issue in the House, I don’t see it used too often in the Senate.
It also still doesn’t explain why increasing the gas tax to adjust for inflation somehow is a product of a hack-progressive alliance. If anything, were those hypothetical votes and debates on the raising the gas tax to occur they would be grand opportunities for the DeLeos, Timilty’s, and Miceli’s of the world to decry liberal tax and spenders and ‘protect the taxpayer’. I doubt it would see the light of day-as it hasn’t the last 25 years or so that it hasn’t been done. This initiative forces the legislators to do the hard work of being fiscally responsible that they can’t manage to do for themselves. Remember, the crowd that likes casinos and cutting taxes is the same crowd wasting what little revenue the state is getting on their cousins no show jobs. Its all connected.
centralmassdad says
at least with respect to the gas tax.
But this strikes me as a far bigger issue locally than nationally. Liberals here elect the most powerful politicians in the state, and have for decades. And who do they elect to be the most powerful politicians in the state?
Bulger. Finneran. DeLeo. These guys all ran on the Democratic-Green Party joint ticket, right?
Oh, we didn’t vote for them, we voted for our local candidate, who is far more progressive, and who does the best she can under the circumstances. Which means: voting for Bulger, Finneran, DeLeo, etc. so as not to be totally marginalized. Woot, woot.
Liberals in this state would be far, FAR more powerful, politically, if they made up a larger portion of a smaller Democratic Party. But they won’t do that, because they dutifully run to support the hack– “Are you telling me that someone who isn’t a Democrat would be better?” and support not their own liberalism but rather a political party that pays their liberalism little heed, except in the position paper department.
SomervilleTom says
I just replaced the ancient steam boiler and radiators in the downstairs apartment that we rent out. This work qualified for a significant asbestos mitigation grant from Mass Save.
That program is an example of “making noises liberals like to hear”. All of us rightly and proudly celebrate the foresight of our government for putting such programs in place.
I tried to collect the grant. It requires scheduling an appointment for a home energy audit. It requires various approvals. I began calling in early August. Nobody answered the phone. I waited on “hold” for as long as ninety minutes, being told every 30 seconds or so that I could leave message and somebody would call me back. I left a half dozen messages. Nobody called back. I gave up. The much-ballyhooed program is a lie. It’s a very sweet lie, all dolled up in very green climate-sensitive clothes — and it’s still a lie.
The *REALITY* is that our government sucks. We are unable to deliver too many of the marvelous programs we brag about. Our leaders lie to us. As CMD points out, our leaders make noises we like to hear just long enough to get elected.
When it comes time to staff agencies, they make sure their children, grandchildren, god-children, nephews, nieces, contributors, and the rest are awarded jobs in places like the Probation Department, the many Housing Authorities, the various inspection facilities and labs, and so on.
When these incompetents try to do things like roll out health care connector websites, unemployment websites, or Mass Save energy rebates, nothing works.
It is all connected. It is far more true than it ought to be.
Our government suffers from pervasive incompetence and corruption. Our party has dominated that government for a very long time, and things have gotten worse instead of better.
The crowd that likes casinos and cutting taxes is the crowd that benefits from the skimming and corruption that’s already in place.
There is NO realistic choice for a responsible and informed voter who has no patience for GOP delusions and no tolerance for Democratic lies and corruption.
rcmauro says
… but I kind of agree with it.
John Tehan says
That money does not go to the probation department. Are there hack jobs in the transportation department? Maybe – but the money from the gas tax does NOT fund anything else.
Al says
then structure it as a percentage of the raw cost of the gas sans any tax and let it rise according to price like any of the sales taxed purchases we make every day. Of course, under that scenario, if gas prices climb steeply, the tax will climb steeply as well, and when gas prices fall, the tax revenue will fall commensurately. The difference seems to be in how we have approached the taxes, with gas getting taxed by the gallon, and all other taxed sales by the dollar amount of the purchase. We did have an increase in the rate of sales tax a few years ago. That’s different than having revenues increase because sales of goods increasing. The Lege had to vote on that. The governor asked for a gas tax increase then, but they had other ideas. I have no problem with the gas tax rate increasing. I just want it to be as a result of a conscious decision, not an automatic move triggered by old legislation.
Trickle up says
Gasoline prices are volatile, so pegging the gas tax to spike when gas prices do is not the best plan.
stomv says
include gasoline in the sales tax (as well as having a volumetric tax). It ain’t unheard of.
merrimackguy says
except those that want better public transportation.
So that’s one divide.
Most people are willing to pay more to get something better.
Many of those people think that money should be spent more wisely. (as mentioned, MA seems to have gotten poor quality at a high cost).
So that’s another divide.
Regardless of where you stand, many people think that the legislature needs to engage in debate before they raise taxes. Many people think that automatically increasing the amount of money flowing in any direction is asking for it to it to be wasted.
In theory I would not be opposed to automatic increases if I had faith that it would be spent wisely here. I don’t have that faith.
I would be on board to listening about a national gas tax that was related to an overall price- but again that money is going back to the states so people would have to be confident the money was well spent, again not many have confidence in that occurring.
When the Governor starts talking about heavy rail connections between Boston and Springfield he doesn’t do these efforts any favors. More money should equal safer roads (they’re finally redoing the Methuen rotary! http://methuenrotary.mhd.state.ma.us/) or safer bridges, or a faster way to get to work or whatever through a variety of methods including public transit.
SomervilleTom says
If public rail (heavy or light) service — between, say, Springfield and Boston and between Concord, Manchester, and Nashua NH and Boston — was convenient, affordable and safe, then we would make a SUBSTANTIAL dent in the highway maintenance and traffic throughout Eastern MA. Not just passenger service, either — if freight could be moved by rail into or near Boston more affordably, then we would remove a large number of the heavy trucks that destroy our highways.
The suggestion that public transportation spending is in opposition to highway spending is a dangerous delusion promoted by forces who benefit from crowded highways.
When the damage done by our addiction to cheap gasoline is so well-documented, then opposition to even small steps that turn us in a sustainable direction is nonsensical.
Of COURSE the gas tax should be indexed.
merrimackguy says
that when the average person hears about something that has nothing to do with them they are not supportive.
And everyone always questions the ridership projections once you move outside the urban areas.
There are other issues as well. I work right near that line that would be the route to/from Nashua and if you think regular commuter rail vs the infrequent 5 mph freight that go by wouldn’t totally eff people up around here (Lowell, N Chelmsford, Tyngsboro) you’re mistaken. People who don’t even know what a false dichotomy is would be opposed.
Also note that people from S NH wanting to use commuter rail already drive to N. Billerica to get on, it wouldn’t make sense to drive west to Nashua. Theoretical rarely trumps practical. The gas tax indexing is going to lose by a SUBSTANTIAL margin.
Christopher says
Who in the world actually benefits from crowded highways?
fenway49 says
that said highways need to be expanded by their construction companies. People who sell gas and oil and want people driving, but also benefit from gas wasted in stop-and-go traffic.
SomervilleTom says
People who both depend on selling automobile-related goods and services and who have locations that benefit from heavy traffic.
The restaurants and fast-food outlets near interchanges, where people stuck in traffic go to wait out the jam. People who make money repairing worn-out highways and bridges. People who operate towing companies that rescue overheated vehicles.
The list goes on and on.
nopolitician says
It is no secret that in the Springfield area, the family that owns the large regional bus company has lobbied against rail service for years. If there was a fast alternative from Springfield to NYC, it would take away a huge chunk of their business.
petr says
…since buses travel those same roads. Indeed, the public pays for the ability of the public to transport itself, be it by car, plane, train or subway, so it’s all public transportation.
The title of this post is “Indexing: More economic literacy, please“. It’s about how people don’t understand INDEXING: a point you’ve neatly proven with your talk of ‘increase’. Indexing is about achieving purchasing parity in the context of inflation. From the point of view of purchasing power, there is no “increase” since it’s the same amount of purchasing power. So you’re arguing against a point that was not made in this diary…
NOT indexing the gas tax to inflation is, in fact, allowing the legislature to get away with a passive aggressive TAX CUT.
merrimackguy says
and I don’t think that demanding that voters increase their literacy so they can be talked to, rather than speaking to them in a way they can currently understand is all that smart, but go ahead.
At least people on this thread have used words like “spending” rather than investment and “taxes” rather than all the other euphemisms I have learned from reading posts here.
That is novel to say that not indexing taxes is an automatic tax cut. Politicos will have to remember that one. “I cut your taxes every year because I did not index them.”
jconway says
How will it end indexing? Right now the Herald has it getting soundly passed, so we will have indexing for the near future on the gas tax question, and there are little incentives for legislators to want to change that. And again, I think petr’s explanation makes common sense. The tax is a dollar amount instead of a percentage, thus, when the cost of the item taxed goes up, the percentage of the actual tax collected adjusting for inflation goes down considerably. It seems like most voters are understanding this in the polls as well.
Just like getting rid of the ‘temporary’ Bush tax cuts is not a tax increase, since we are actually restoring taxation to the moderately sane levels they were during the Clinton years.
Only Grover Norquist, who thinks the ideal tax level is somewhere near to zero, would consider these changes ‘increases’.
But sure I am for raising a tax that has not been adjusted for inflation or raised in over 20 years. And liberals do tend to be honest about it, Walter Mondale paid the consequences of that honestly quite profoundly.
jconway says
Brownback might be the first Republican totally punished for the Laffer Curve lie, that somehow cutting taxes will generate government revenue. Now that the people of his state have seen corporate taxes cut which are dollars not going into their pockets, and have also seen schools, roads, teachers, cops, and services cut, they are up in arms begging to be taxed back into civilization instead of cut to the stone age. Brown got elected and re-elected by being the first Californian in either party to be honest that they spent like socialists and were taxed like libertarians. Now they are somewhere in the middle and the economy has gone from 50th in the state back to the top 10. MA should do the same, Barbara Johnson and Ronald Reagans chickens are coming home to roost.
merrimackguy says
and don’t have the time for constant debate.
ryepower12 says
it would make the budget very, very simple.
Sunset it every 5 years so it has to be renewed, and with the knowledge that new additions could be made or things could be reduced as needed.
The budget should be something that is carefully maintained and curated as time goes on, not something that sucks up all the oxygen in the building every year as massive fights have to be had just to maintain the status quo.
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
The worst form of government, as Churchill was fond of saying, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.
ryepower12 says
so long as it can it can be changed at any time.
As I made clear, I think it should be “carefully maintained and curated as time goes on,” which would mean politicians would still be able to argue the merits of new expenses or cuts.
In fact, I think indexing things would make it much easier to have clear and focused debates at specific items of the budget — since you wouldn’t have to decide the whole damn thing in a few very, very busy days.
We have very sophisticated tools and software now. Indexing government’s costs and revenues is just a way to modernize it so we can better focus on the real issues.
Imagine if DC had a budget that was indexed. We’d have never went through a shut down and it would have been much harder for the GOP to take items on the budget hostage. They would have actually had to pass a bill to change items. And it would allow activists to fight for already-established expenses, which is much easier to do than create the snowball effect necessary to add anything new into the item that isn’t supported by the corporate elite.
ryepower12 says
Last sentence.
“create the snowball effect necessary to add anything new into the *budget*”
Not item.
fenway49 says
The gas tax is a singularly good candidate for indexing in my view. As stomv and petr point out about, taxes like the income tax or sales tax are effectively indexed to inflation by virtue of being expressed as a percentage. If the income or price goes up, the tax goes up with it.
Precisely because of the volatility of gasoline prices, there are significant problems with making the gas tax a percentage of the price, both in terms of predicting state revenue from it and hitting drivers all the more when prices spike. It therefore has traditionally been set here as an excise tax of a fixed amount in cents.
As we have seen, however, legislative reluctance to raise the gas tax and face political fallout has resulted in significant erosion of its value in the 23 years since it last was increased. The bill passed by the legislature last year has the virtue, if you can call it that, of addressing this problem while leaving the real value of the gas tax at only two thirds of its 1991 value.
joshostroff says
…and sign up at saferoadsbridges.com – this is an important decision for MA voters, and while the latest polls may show Q1 losing, anyone who cares about this issue (which includes many BMG readers) should get engaged with the campaign, tell friends, send LTEs and be sure to vote NO on Q1. And if you want to volunteer for the campaign that will defeat Q1, please email me at jostroff@t4ma.org.
Disclaimer: my non-profit statewide coalition, Transportation for Massachusetts (t4ma.org) has worked on transportation revenue and reform for years. We worked with our coalition partners and the legislature to develop innovative ways to get the most out of limited transportation dollars through the Project Selection Advisory Council.
Personally, I think that it’s not just how much we spend on transportation, but how we raise it and how we spend it. The Yes on 1 campaign is silent on how we actually fund transportation and what we do with those funds, but very noisy about waste in government. As a Selectman for many years and having worked with many leaders at all levels, it’s not exactly news that government systems can be wasteful. But governing and elections should not be about blowing things up, but building on what works. Well, enough of that. Please get involved in the No on campaign, and thanks for reading this.