FAIRMONT — So, when two sides fight and there’s a standoff, who pays for it in the end?
When you’re dealing with road funding, the states do because a partisan gridlock over a long-term transportation plan has left them with a trickle of federal funding and state plans collecting dust on the shelf. Funding on a matching level is much easier to come up with than funding for projects in their entirety.
Just ask West Virginia Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox, who expects it is going to take $1 billion to finish 17 roads projects, including a toll-free U.S. 35. Well, $1.5 billion if you count funding for the completion of Corridor H.
But voters would have to approve that bond on a ballot. And the state would have to pay back somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 million to $75 million, if you go with the $1 billion figure and opt to not finish Corridor H.
And that means more money at the pump in the end.
So, maybe it’s not just the states who have to pay, but the state’s residents.
Under the Underwood administration, drivers started paying a nickel at the pump for funding for roads projects. If the state’s administration would agree to the bond issue (Tomblin’s office told The Associated Press he had no plans to propose one), there surely would be at least another nickel per gallon, or perhaps a dime.
Though the Legislature passed a $40 million increase to DMV charges for roads projects last year, Tomblin vetoed it.
“One of the reasons the DMV fee was vetoed by Gov. Tomblin was because there was no systematic plan in place for how it would be spent,” Mattox said during a recent Senate hearing on transportation, as reported by the Charleston Daily Mail.
But now there’s a plan with 17, and possibly 18, projects just sitting on go.
“If we can get out there on the front end of it, educate the populace as to, ‘These are the projects we’re looking at, and this is the potential for having better roads for the future of West Virginia,’ we’ll be better off if we do that,” said Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bob Beach, D-Monongalia, Marion.
But it’s not that easy to stick out your hand time and time again and ask the taxpayers to carry a bigger burden, other lawmakers said.
“I like the enthusiasm, but we need some real political muscle here to be able to say to the people of West Virginia we need to own the problem,” Senate Minority Leader Mike Hall, R-Putnam, said. “We can’t skirt the reality; we have to make some tough decisions.”
So we asked our readers to make a tough decision of their own. Last week, we asked our online readers to answer the question, “How much per gallon of gas would you be willing to pay to complete roads projects around West Virginia if the state were to obtain a $1 billion bond?”
And here are the “returns:”
• A dime. Do you know what rough roads do to car maintenance? 14.12 percent
• I’d pay an extra nickel to create jobs and get some much-needed work done. 15.29 percent
• The nickel I pay now should be sufficient. The state and I have to live within our means. 16.08 percent
• Not another penny. Gas prices are ridiculous already. 54.51 percent
Ouch. That’s a tough sell already.
This week, let’s talk about primary elections. Are you frustrated that the presidential primary is “over” by the time West Virginia heads to the polls?
Log on. Vote. Email me or respond online.
Misty Poe
Managing Editor
mpoe@timeswv.com