(MPRN-Makcinac Island) Coming up with more money for roads was a big topic of discussion this week on an island with no cars. The key issue at the Detroit Regional Chamber conference on Mackinac Island – can the Legislature finally come up with more than a $1 billion dollars in new revenue for transportation.
Every year, hundreds of Michigan’s political and business leaders converge on the island, which has been motor-vehicle-free since 1898. But Mackinac Island has roads to accommodate the bikes and horse-drawn carriages that serve as the primary means of transportation. And, as anyone who’s walked the streets or sniffed the air on Mackinac knows, the horses leave something behind.
“The roads on Mackinac Island are actually some of the cleanest because they get cleaned daily,”
says Kirk Steudle, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation.
“They’re picked up by people rather than a machine, so that’s rather unique.”
And it makes the roads – including a state trunkline that runs around the perimeter of the island one of the most expensive per-mile to maintain. But Steudle says every road poses unique maintenance and repair challenges.
“The Upper Peninsula -- it starts about, it here has a lot more rock and swamps,” he says. “You get to the west side of the state, you have lots of sand. The east side of the state, you have a lot of clay, and how pavements react to that is different. And so the same thing here on Mackinac Island, you have different traffic loadings here. There isn’t any super-heavy trucks. There are no trucks period, so the roads should last longer.”
Not so in the rest of the state, where the roads have been deteriorating faster than the state can fix them. Doug Rothwell of the group Business Leaders for Michigan arrived on the island with the mission of convincing reluctant lawmakers to adopt a new road funding solution in the wake of this month’s Proposal One ballot fiasco. Although business owners are typically averse to new government spending, Rothwell says his group believes new fees and taxes are unavoidable if the job is going to get done.
“We think the majority of the money to fix the roads is going to have to come from new revenue, not from cuts,” he says. “Not that cuts can’t be part of the package, but it can’t be the majority.”
Part of the problem for Rothwell, Governor Rick Snyder (R), and other supporters of new revenue is there are few, if any, any new ideas on the table. All the proposals have already been debated over several years and rejected. So the challenge is to find a new way to put together pieces in a way that’s acceptable to a majority of lawmakers and the public. Governor Snyder says one thing that’s changed is more pressure from the public to get something done:
“Let’s learn from Proposal One and say, what’s a solution that can be done potentially legislatively without going to voters that will require some belt-tightening, but also potentially looking at real revenue increases?”
“Well I’m getting the question right now, are you opposed to new revenue? And I say no. I am truly committed to solving the problem,”
says House Speaker Kevin Cotter (R-Mount Pleasant) has unveiled a plan that focuses on cutting spending elsewhere, but has left the door open to some sort of substantial tax or fee hike. What’s usually discussed is increasing the gas tax and linking it to inflation, as well as registration fees.
Hearings on road funding will continue next week in Lansing as Republicans, in particular, search for alternatives to new fees and taxes. The businesspeople who attended the Mackinac Island conference seemed to be generally in favor of the money coming from the people using the roads. But fuel taxes are such a tough sell, it’s been almost two decades since the Legislature summoned the political will to raise them.
