The Pioneer Institute came out with a report on our state’s infrastructure needs, and estimates we’re some $17 Billion in the hole on maintenance alone. PI hypes this (on our site!) as “Save The Longfellow” — using an icon of Boston as representative of the neglect our infrastructure suffers. They recommend a more active, forward-looking kind of asset management, wherein we set aside money throughout the life of an asset (bridge, tunnel, building, whatever), thereby avoiding the need for radical repair — and the resulting jolt to the budget.
This is all fine and well. But the old question is “Where are we gonna get the money?”
There are any number of starting points for the discussion of how to take on these challenges. Gov. Patrick has raised the state’s bond cap, allowing for more borrowing of money by the state. It may be worth considering spending our recent tax windfall on the maintenance backlog, perhaps even at the expense of the rainy day fund. And certainly, I think any major building initiatives ought to be accompanied by a new, rock-solid dedication to strict financial and engineering oversight of building projects. We should look at various other efficiencies, like getting rid of cop details on road construction, and revisiting contracts with the various unions — for instance, the Carmen’s Union’s plush deal with the MBTA.
But I continue to be baffled by Speaker DiMasi’s apparent allergy to raising revenues, whether by tax, closing loopholes, or casino. (I don’t like casinos either, for the record.) But no matter: the plain facts say that we’re going to have to pay for these assets one way or another, or watch them slowly crumble like the Longfellow, or the Storrow Drive tunnel, or the MBTA … and on and on. Is there any question that this has a massive effect on our economy, on our aesthetic environment, our ability to get around the state — our whole quality of life?
Have you ever known someone — or been someone — who just can’t get it together? I can’t quit smoking; I can’t get a job; I can’t stop kicking the dog; I just can’t quit you baby … I think psychologists call this learned helplessness.
There is something essentially broken about our political discourse, when we are made to feel fatalistic about the possibility of merely addressing our own needs: We can’t raise the revenues; we can’t take on the special interests; we can’t plan for the future; we can’t be efficient; we can’t do construction properly; we can’t bring projects in on time and under budget; etc.
Gov. Patrick takes a lot of grief for the old “Together We Can” slogan; and even for its vagueness, in context, I understand exactly what this is supposed to mean.
We didn’t get into this $17-20 billion hole by accident; it’s been the result of decades of deferred responsibility. It’s time to fix it, to make the necessary investments, to finally act like adults and take responsibility. Let’s start entertaining real proposals — however difficult to hear, however challenging, however impolitic — for taking this on.
Everyone puts it off to future people to foot the bill.
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I’d raid the rainy day fund to get the ball rolling and I’d put a minimum line item in the budget that will keep us from falling behind and gradually allow us to catch up. The costs to repair/replace are only going to go up the longer it gets put off.
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But I don’t have to get re-elected. So it’s easy for me to say.
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My guess is they end up selling the roads and bridges to private companies. They’ll get a boatload of up front cash and won’t have to worry about long term maintenence costs.
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Private companies will institute tolls (prices regulated by the state) and sell advertising and sponsorships.
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I suspect WalMart will want to sponsor the Zakim bridge, it being the biggest and highest profile.
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Maybe Exxon/Mobil will do the tunnel, oil coming from beneath the ground.
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Any other guesses? Ernie Boch III, I’m counting on you for witty suggestions.
… and dismaying. How can grates be in such disrepair? How can the Longfellow be in disrepair?
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$17 billion or $70 billion, bloody fix it!
I like their idea of every major project needs to have a maintenance budget plan. That’s smart. But I find it bizarre that they call for some tiny percentage of the operating budget for the state being set aside for maintenance, as if that money doesn’t come from somewhere. The Pioneer institute doesn’t have the guts to call for a small tax hike to pay for what they clearly know needs to be paid for. Nor do they want to suggest a cut in other services. So they magically find a .1% to set aside, that eventually grows to 1%. This money is supposed to just appear from somewhere, kind of a form of immaculate budgeting.
They studied the roads and bridges; their current condition and their needs. Then they said this is how much you need to budget to make it right.
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If the people and their elected offcials decide to raise taxes or cut spending or some combination of the two in order to pay for it, that’s up to them.
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Pioneer and whoever pushed for the report are interested in getting the issue front and center. How it gets paid for doesn’t matter to them. There’s a whole bunch of other budget folks to chime in on that.
@noternie: You’ve got it. Let’s say that 100% of the money needed to address the problem was going to come through tax increases. Year over year, you’d still need the discipline to set aside money from the budget for capital. This fact does not change just because revenues do.
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The 1-2% for capital — if such a solution is to work — must be a committed to. They must be protected as strongly as reserves. That means not sacrificing the funding to operating budgets.
…that were true. But they do make specific recommendations for how to add funds to deal with the budget issues, but don’t say where those funds should come from, taxes or cuts. They go all the way to saying how to create the funding mechanism, but don’t explain the details.
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I’m just saying that they aren’t just writing a paper pointing out the disrepair of our bridges.
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I’d also add that the Pioneer institute, from what I’ve understood (correct me if I’m wrong), has opposed fixing the corporate tax loopholes, calling it a tax increase.
I’m sorry, I just went back and looked for any recomendations they made on where the money should come from and can’t find it.
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Certainly they discuss several ways other states have set up systems to organize and prioritize projects. They suggest what they consider efficiencies and talk about ways to go in steps from where we are to where we need to be.
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But I don’t see them saying “get the extra money you’ll need here or there.” They just say this is how much you need and this is how you should handle it once you budget it.
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It’s the Pioneer. They’re “nonpartisan” but with all the conservative philosophies. So they probably would rather cut something else rather than raise additional revenue. But they don’t say that. Unless I missed it.
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Did I miss it? If I did, I apologize.
Gov. Patrick takes a lot of grief for the old “Together We Can” slogan; and even for its vagueness…
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…came from. It came from Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign “Morning in America.” A feel-good theme. Reagan, of course, had pResided over four of the worst years since Vietnam. A feel-good theme got him re-elected. And a feel-good theme got Patrick elected.
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It really is as simple as that.
Wow, I really was too young to fully appreciate him.
…Norman Vincent Peale in the 1950s.
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But it cannot be denied that Reagan ran an issueless “feel-good” campaign in 1984.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, in one of his many famous sayings – which I am sure I am not the first to paraphrase, said “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society”
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Having served in a bloody civil war, being wounded multiple times, I gather Holmes knew the difference between a civilized society and chaos – unlike the armchair warriors and tax meanies of today.
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“Mouldering Massachusetts” is the reality, not the Massachusetts Miracle, folks.
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Either we pay up, take care of our roads, bridges, college buildings, state house, etc. or like the bridge in Minnealpolis, we will see cars in Massachusetts falling into the Charles, parking structures on the shore collapse inwards like post apocalyptic relics, and our economy join the withered ranks of 3rd world nations.
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Pay up or shut up.
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Use it, maintain it, or lose it.
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Brutal, but true.
AP is reporting:
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A bridge carrying rush hour traffic over interstate 35W in Minneapolis is shown after it collapsed, sending numerous vehicles into the Mississippi River early Wednesday evening, Aug. 1, 2007. A busy highway bridge that spans the Mississippi River just northeast of Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour Wednesday, sending dozens of cars, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water. (AP Photo/Jim Mone
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link: http://www.boston.co…
An overpass collapsed in the outskirts of my lovely Montreal last fall.
…the states’ (I’m using the term “state” in an international sense) dereliction of duty in regards infrastructure. All we need to do, when we’re in Wellesley, is go to the Whole Foods store near the overpass of Rt. 16 (Washington St) over Rt. 9 (Worcester St). The state of MA has been supposedly undertaking a renovation of the overpass for about, oh, five years. That is idiotic; it should have taken at most a couple of months, certainly no more than a year. But the project has been starved for funds because of the state’s total and complete mismanagement of the Big Dig.
Yes, it’s Learned Helplessness and I think it has to do with politics for the sake of power & money vs. politics for the civic good. And Learned Cynicism about government. We have too many games players here in Massachusetts.
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See my related post about officialdom that refuses to do what’s right:
http://www.bluemassg…