Cross-posted from The Accountable Strategies blog
Between these two reports, a convincing case is made that unless we take meaningful steps to address this situation, the United States is headed from industrialized toward third-world nation status. It’s already unsafe to drive on our bridges and through our tunnels. Much of our population lives near environmentally contaminated sites, our school buildings are falling apart, our water treatment plants are aging, our dams are unsafe, and our national parks are unmaintained, among other problems And all this is happening as new infrastructure demands are being created due to the ongoing shifts in our population from core cities into far-flung suburbs.
(Disclosure: I used to work with David Westerling, one of the Longfellow Bridge report’s co-authors, at the Massachusetts Inspector General’s Office.) The Longfellow Bridge report notes that while there are pockets of excellence in Massachusetts government on maintenance issues:
there appears to be no high-level awareness of the magnitude of the problem of deferred maintenance, or any comprehensive statewide effort to address it in either the legislative or the executive branch of state government.
The report estimates a maintenance backlog in Massachusetts of $17 billion, across all levels of state government, including bridges, highways, MBTA facilities, the state university system and state and community colleges, courthouses and others.
The basic problem is that since asset deterioration occurs gradually, there is a tendency to defer preventative maintenance. At the same time, maintenance is treated in most agency budgets as a discretionary expense?one which takes away from spending on programs in the agency’s operational budget. This, combined with a “diffusion of responsibility and outright inability to monitor asset condition,” results in the “massive and growing maintenance backlog.”
The Longfellow Bridge report cites DeSitter’s “Law of Fives,” which projects that if maintenance is not performed on a public asset, then repairs equaling five times the maintenance costs are required. It notes that states, including Texas and Arizona, that have created State Infrastructure Banks and have moved ahead of Massachusetts in providing for transportation infrastructure.
It will be a key test to see what Governor Deval Patrick does about this. Will he propose legislation, as the report recommends, to enact a capital maintenance reserve fund, adequately fund the state Division of Capital Asset Management and empower it to oversee and monitor the state?s asset maintenance, and issue an Executive Order to compel state agencies to use DCAM?s existing computerized CAMIS database, which tracks the condition and maintenance of state-owned buildings?
In her article in The New Republic, Sarah Williams Goldhagen suggests that we may have already traded places with many nations, particularly those in Asia, that used to be considered underdeveloped or “third world.” She points out that:
Highways and roads in those (Asian) countries are not pitted moonscapes. Public transportation, from trains to trolleys to buses, is plentiful, in good repair, and punctual. Public structures of all kinds–from governmental and civic buildings to public parks and urban plazas to “streetscape” elements such as pedestrian bridges and roadway lighting fixtures–are of immensely higher design quality and in immensely better shape (than in this country).
Goldhagen identifies a number of politcal reasons for the American neglect of its infrastructure, but perhaps the key is that since the Reagan administration, the federal government has fobbed off its responsibility for maintenance and upgrades to state and local governments. Partly as a result of that, the maintenance and upgrading of our infrastructure is increasingly falling into private hands. Goldhagan believes this infrastructure privatization spells “social disaster” in the short term and “economic disaster” in the long term. As Goldhagan puts it:
Infrastructure is the classic public good that the free market does not and cannot provide. On the scale that is necessary, only the federal government can make the difference.
Goldhagen makes a number of recommendations that correspond, in a national sense, to the Massachusetts-based recommendations in the Longfellow Bridge report. Among them are the need for a National Infrastructure Agency, that would plan, fund, and coordinate infrastructure maintenance and improvement over the long term. She also recommends that Congres establish a federal line-item capital budget for infrastructure maintenance, as most other developed countries have done.
Finally, Goldhagen calls for leadership in addressing our infrastructure needs, and specifically lauds the leadership of then Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Fred Salvucci in the 1980s in getting Boston’s Big Dig project to happen. The lack of such leadership today explains why the “pathetically ill-conceived” design for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway on the reclaimed Central Artery land has been “hung out to dry,” she maintains.
… is that you have local agencies budgeting for maintenance, but DCAM doling out funds for capital projects. I know DCAM went through a process about rethinking how to work the incentive so that local agencies would keep up on the preventative maintenance and not relying on deferment of maintenance creating a capital project that they then didn’t have to worry about the funding sources because they would then get help from DCAM. I’m not sure what the ultimate decision was on how to manage the incentives though.
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The CAMIS (Capital Asset Management Information System) system is a great idea, but it has one central problem. In order for the database to be useful it has to be current. Keeping it current depends on the efforts of what must be hundreds of people in dozens of places in MA to keep it up to date. Whenever I’m working on a project I try to take note when the conditions for success of the project rely on people or events largely out of my control. I worry that this is the situation with CAMIS. I don’t know what the incentive is for these agencies to spend their money on man-hours toward this task. In a ‘big-picture’ sense the benefit is obvious, but these agencies are charged with budgeting their own little corner of the ‘big-picture’ so I doubt it translates to them.
The big question is, as always, where does the money come from?
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Patrick can submit the legislation and create a capital maintenance reserve fund, but where will the money come from for that fund? The reason the maintenance is being put off is because there is no money for it. So even if we create a state fund, there is still no money. In my town, we often debate putting off maintenance based on the lack of money. Who do you take money from? The schools? People get really upset when you do that. Teachers complain about class size being too big. You can’t reduce teachers salaries or benefits because of their collective bargaining agreement. So you cut the maintenance budget for the school buildings, creating a problem for someone else in the future to deal with. The same goes for other town owned buildings, like the police headquarters, the fire house, the town hall, etc. So when you are already dealing with leaking roofs in your schools, how do you justify doing any maintenance to the roadways and bridges in your town? Hell, we had a two hour debate at one meeting about repainting the crosswalks. We had no money to repaint them, we just cut all school busing, so more kids were going to be walking to school and none of the crosswalks were visible anymore. The selectmen and town manager were petrified that some kid would be hit in a crosswalk and the driver’s defense would be that they couldn’t see the crosswalk so the town would be open to a lawsuit.
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And transferring the responsibility to DCAM is not the solution. They have a slue of their own problems. From restrictive public bid laws that are part of the whole problem with doing work on our public infrastructure to problems with construction and project management.
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Something has to give. Most towns have already reduced school funding down to the absolute minimum or below, delayed all maintenance because there is no money, and reduced the services provided by the town. In the mean time, they have increased property tax to near the breaking point for most people.
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Oh, and doing the maintenance as a citizen group is the dumbest idea I have heard in a while. Fist of all, the problem isn’t sweeping the dirt and debris. It’s fixing the pot holes and I doubt you know how to do any hot asphalt patching correctly. Second, it’s maintaining the paint on the bridge to keep the corrosion protection. And this includes the undersides of the bridge. If you had a citizen group trying to paint that you would just end up with gallons of paint being spilled into the Charles. An while I “love that dirty water”, I’d prefer to see it continue to be cleaned up rather then contaminated by paint. Not to mention, I bet your union friends would be a bit upset about you taking money out of their pockets.
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Or at least that’s how I read voteatercerus’s post.
Well, we could dedicate a portion of the gas tax to it. Or raise other taxes. Not likely, I guess. But in any case, it seems to me that if maintenance is truly made a priority, the money will be there. We’re going to have to pay either way, and delaying maintenance only makes it that much more expensive.
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You note some truly painful decisions that have been made in your town. It shouldn’t have to be that way. If federal and state politicians, in particular, come to understand the scope of this problem, they will make the money available.
Is not a sufficient answer.
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In my town, we started a policy during our town budget meetings a couple of years ago, if you’re going to increase funding to one department you have to say what department(s) you are going to decrease by a corresponding amount.
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So specifically where? You mentioned raising the gas tax. We are currently in the top 16 for taxing gas at $0.235 per gallon in state taxes (this does include 2.5 cents per gallon that goes to a slush fund for cleaning up spills from underground tanks). So we could increase this tax, although that will be political suicide for whomever proposes it. By the way, all of the gas tax, except for the 2.5 cents I mentioned above, and the 18.5 cents per gallon in federal taxes is supposed to go to maintaining our road ways.
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You say, “If federal and state politicians, in particular, come to understand the scope of this problem, they will make the money available.” I don’t think the problem is politicians understanding the scope of the problem. It’s politicians with the backbone to actually do something about the problem.
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Oh, and didn’t Patrick run on lowering property taxes by providing relief to cities and towns and then back away from that as soon as he was elected and saw how bad the finances for the state were? So if he can’t find the money for lowering property taxes, why do you think he can find the money for maintenance?
The Bank of America Bridge rather than the “Tobin”? I’m only half kidding.
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David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute wrote a reasonable Oped piece in the GLobe this week, arguing that municipal payments for health insurance premiums for public employees ought to be cut to the orevailing private sector percentages. While his “unions are bad” mantra is tired, his overall argument is one I could see gaining traction as more and more Massachusetts residents are forced to pay a larger portion, if not all, of their premiums.
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WHile I remain hopeful that ecnomomic growth, responsible leadership and smart-growth oriented infrastructure improvements will eventually see us through this quiet crisis, we may have to start getting creative.
The UMass budget pays for all sorts of things that are beyond its educational mission. Billions. We could appropriate more revenue from Harvard and MIT, which have Billions sitting in the bank. I guess they never go to Chelsea, but maybe they care about the Longfellow.
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And it can’t cost that much to paint bridges. For some reason we don’t paint the Tobin bridge at all, and it is rusting. Everyone knows you have to paint bridges or they’ll rust. It’s criminal deriliction of duty and someone should be in prison for making the decision not to paint the bridge. San Fransisco and Brooklyn have full time painters that go back and forth painting the bridge, we apparently don’t.
Way more then you think. I quick search of Mass.gov (don’t forget all of the bid results and contracts are public record) shows that bridge rehab and painting on Route 2 was $858,000.
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Keep in mind, that bridge was an overland bridge and the Longfellow is over water. So you’ll need to add barges, safety concerns, I imagine some kind of paint recovery system so overspray doesn’t end up in the river.
My union represents bridge & structural steel painters. The cost associated with painting bridges include, as JK noted, all kinds of safety issues. Safety for the workers themselves, safety for those under the bridges and many containment issues involving removal of old paint (including lead-based paint) and sandblasting.
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It is a difficult and dangerous job. That said, our members donate their time to community projects on a regular basis and have no objection to “citizen painters” spending a Saturday volunteering to paint local projects.
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The reality is that maintenace has been allowed to lag because funding has been diverted to other projects. Most bridge painting projects are so far behind that it can’t help but cost significant money to fix the problem.
Dave says:
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To which I would reply that many politicians either aren’t listening or are ignoring the problem. These problems have been around for many many moons. During Romney’s tenure Doug Foy toured the state speaking to the public, including legislators, about this problem. Many groups have stated very publicly how dangerous and widespread the problem is for years.
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The two painful options as I see them are:
1. Designate funding to fix/maintain our bridges. This will result in some screams from the public of incompetence, tax and spend, etc. but will hopefully keep folks safe, or,
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2. Real physical pain and death. We already have several bridges in MA that have fallen down or been closed. Granted these are smaller, less-used bridges but how long before either too many bridges are closed or one collapses with dire consequences?
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Personally, I’ll take the pain in the pocket over the second pain.
This is particularly galling in Massachusetts, where Democrats have controlled the purse strings for so long. If we stand for anything, we stand for government playing a role the private sector can’t play. I think this a real disgrace — a black mark on DiMasi, Travaglini, Tom Finneran, Tom Birmingham (my favorite of the bunch), Billy Bulger, Chet Atkins … every Democratic leader who was in a position to do something about this.
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But that’s the past. We have to demand that this get fixed, and fast.
Our elected leaders make a plea to the public – “do we want another Big Dig implosion, statewide?” – and give us different solutions. There are only two ways to pay for this mess that I see, and neither will be incredibly popular: bonds or raising taxes.
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If we go about fixing all of our problems, I think we could correctly tie some of the blame to 4 Republican Governors who allowed this to take place under their watch – while arguing in favor of fixing all of their messes. If people know where their money is going, they’re less likely to get angry if we end up having to raise taxes for a few years to make these fixes. Then, in a few years, politicians would be held accountable if they try to break their promises and keep the rates at elevated levels. Clearly, I favor raising taxes by a small amount to fix it… because I’d rather not be paying for these bonds over the many decades to come.
The Legislature doing so would only anger people, I think, and rightly so.
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That said, DiMasi and Murray have fairly little historical baggage and could approach the problem with a clean slate. Montigny (any other Ways and Means chairs still serving?) could sit quietly.
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…the ribbon cutting syndrome.
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Just how many politicians get publicity for doing photo-ops at a ribbon cutting event for a new! improved! leaky tunnel, versus a non-ribbon cutting event for an overpass that has been repaired.
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That’s the problem, people. Face up to it. There’s no exposure for politicians in repairs. And, lest anyone doubt, it’s the same all over–not just Massachusetts.
For watchers of transportation issues there is also a visible decrease in federal funding.
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I went looking for national stats but can’t find them quickly, so you can see some MA stats from the recent transportation funding debacle report here:
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http://www.maroundta…
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Specifically the report states that (emphasis mine)
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Yippee, right? You can see a chart of the funding levels past and anticipated future on page 24 of the report.
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This is happening across the country BTW. The feds are giving less money to roads/bridges because they have de-valued maintenance, therefore states do too.
This is happening across the country BTW. The feds are giving less money to roads/bridges because they have de-valued maintenance, therefore states do too.
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I suspect that the across-the-board reduction has more to to with the last paragraph of my “observations” post below than anything.
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This is false. Federal aid for highways has gone up each year over the last decade or so.
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A good source for this type of information is here: US Government Spending
…minus sign on intergovernmental transfers.
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I also did not notice anything that suggested federal expenditures over the last decade.
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It is a mistake to presume that everyone is going to be flummoxed by indecipherable web pages. Draw our evidence together.
If you drill down under Transportation you can see each individual line item.
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Federal Aid to Highways has gone up year over year.
As I open that chart there are zeros for about a dozen or so items including highways, mass transit, etc. I’m not a statistician but something here doesn’t smell right.
Which zeros are you talking about?
These zeros. Maybe I’m reading it wrong, or maybe there is an intentional use of fuzzy math?
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Those line items fall under “Other Transportation.”
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As an example, take “Highways (including roads and str (B46).”
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“B46” is a multi-function code that correlates to the following:
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A) Function 44 – Finance and Employment expenses for Regular Highway maintenance, operation, repair, and construction of nontoll highways, streets, roads, alleys, sidewalks, bridges, tunnels, ferry boats, viaducts, and related structures.
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B) Function 45 – Finance and Employment expenses for Toll Highway Maintenance, operation, repair, and construction of highways, roads, bridges, ferries, and tunnels operated on a fee or toll basis.
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And here’s where this gets a bit confusing … “B46” is a REVENUE code, not an EXPENSE code.
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An example of an Expense code from that list would be “G44.” That code also falls under Function 44 but is specific to Land & Existing Structures expenses.
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The reason these are zeros on this site are twofold:
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1. The site does not list expenses under $.05B;
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2. Those codes fall under “Other Transportation” and that line item can be additional spending on top of the regular highway (or air, or rail) expenses.
Repairing deterioration across the Commonwealth will be difficult and enormously costly. I don’t see it getting done unless we commit to a program similar to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. A 5 cents per gallon increase in the gas tax would go a long way to fund repairs to our infrastructure but I don’t think anyone has the stones to propose it.
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On the other hand much can be done to prevent the decay of our structures and our highway department doesn’t seem willing to do it. And the people don’t care, they do not want to pay for anything. DelValle? Never heard of her.
…as the fact that we need to return the state’s gas tax to what it was original sold to be: a fund to develop and maintain the roadways of the state. Since then, it has been so misused for other things, including mass transit that there are insufficient funds to develop and maintain the roadways of the state.
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And that’s aside from the depredations of the Big Dig.
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The gas tax–at both the federal and state level–was originally sold as a user fee. It hasn’t that for a long, long time.
but the problem needs fixing and that will take bucketfulls of cash. Repubs never want pay for their spending but realists understand that you need to pay as you go. So the question remains, How do we pay for this?
So the question remains, How do we pay for this?
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…a large portion can probably be done by returning the entirety gas tax to its original purpose: the roads. And not divert it to general revenues.
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Actually, given that heavy vehicles such as trucks do much damage to the roadways, I would favor increasing fees on them. Annual fees based on miles driven and weight carried. It’s ridiculous to have road maintenance based primarily on the gas tax, when light vehicles such as passenger cars do little damage to the roadways.
are shipped to them in trucks. So is everything else they buy. Some sustainability folks push the Hundred Mile Diet I guess that those people do much less damage than the rest of us who collectively kick the hell out of the infrastructure through our interstate commerce.
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Our highway system is our greatest achievement. We need to maintain it. If you have to drive to Toledo there is a route of highways to get you there. If you want to buy some choice endive from Wisconsin there is a highway that will get the endive to you. Drive from here to Seattle? No problem. We all benefit from the system and we should all pay for it.
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Think of the ruins of Rome and Athens. They were once grand structures.
…tongue in cheak, but it seems to me that if
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The vegetables they buy … are shipped to them in trucks. So is everything else they buy
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…then, to the extent that that is true, the vendors can attempt to charge the customers for the extent of the roadway damage caused by their multi-ton trucks. It doesn’t all have to be levied on the persons who pay gas tax merely to get to work or the mall. Maybe by allocating expenses according to the damage that they incure, the vendors will switch to less damaging vehicles to transport their goods. As it is now, they have no incentive to do so.
I sympathize with the plight of the Longfellow Bridge, but I just wish the state would finish its repair of the Rt 16 overpass over Rt 9 in Wellesley before I die. The state is responsible for the repair, not the town. The state tore down half of the overpass a number of years ago, which has led to massive backups on Rt 16. The state let the stonework on the Rt 9 portion go to wrack and ruin (there were actually forsythia growing out of the cracks between the stones.
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On the subject of they @ Tue Aug 28, 2007 at 13:55:56 PM EDT
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The UMass budget pays for all sorts of things that are beyond its educational mission. Billions.
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Like most major universities, UMass Amherst would like to consider itself to be a research institution, not just an educational institution. In order to be such, its tenured faculty has to be provided with research tools. One of the criteria that university departments use in deciding whether or not to give tenure to an assicant professor is his or her ability to attract money, via government (federal or state) grants or contracts (with private industry) to support the research.
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Quite frankly, the best physics professor that I had was an extremely good researcher, and I eventually worked in his cryogenics lab, even when I was in law school. It would be a mistake to downplay the importance of support of research at a university to attract qualified instructors.
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Re Dave from Hvad @ Tue Aug 28, 2007 at 13:10:20 PM EDT
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Where does the money come from (for repair of roadways and bridges)? Well, we could dedicate a portion of the gas tax to it.
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That is where the gas tax money is supposed to go. But, from what I read many moons ago, the state, in its infinite lack of wisdon chose to divert a significant portion of it to subsidize the MBTA. And, I’d almost be willing to bet that it basically goes into the general fund.
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That last is what the Feds did with their portion of the gas tax a couple of decades ago, to reduced the looming deficit primarily during the Reagan years. Ths highway trust fund, like the social security trust fund, was essentially merged into the general budget to hide the operating deficits.