Road Funding

So it seems my state government isn't even good at their job.  They need something done, can't figure out how to do it while keeping up their 'No New Taxes' rant, so they're turning to the people of Michigan.

I talked a bit about this in December.  Our roads are bad, and we need more money to fix them.  At the time, the two houses of the legislature had different ideas.  One was to raise more taxes by raising the gas tax.  One was to NOT raise more money and take some from the education fund.

They couldn't agree on how to do it.  Understand, we're 90 yards down the field.  We know the problem (road are bad and have been underfunded for years), we know how to fix them (fund them properly).  We just can't agree on HOW to fund them properly.

We in Michigan know about road problems.  We have some of the worst circumstances.  There are a lot of cars in Michigan (both a big population and a lot of car ownership for that population).  We use our roads a lot, both for personal travel and for hauling goods.  Personal travel as we often live far away from where we work, and hauling as we manufacture a lot of goods and haul a lot of goods out of Canada and out of the state.  We're in the cold enough region that our extended freeze/thaw seasons get water into the cracks in the road and open those cracks up to the point that the roads fail.   All of that adds up to this...we have a lot of roads that are more expensive to build and more expensive to maintain.


Yet we don't fund them as well as other states.  I.e.... our road suck all the time.

So what is the legislature proposing?  A sweeping change to the constitution that comes in several parts.  First is that a lot of the taxes derived from fuel will be re-allocated specifically to road and travel (public transportation gets a taste of these newly directed taxes).  The money they're reallocating WAS being directed to local governments and education.  To ensure that those two entities don't get royally screwed over they'll raise the state sales tax by one percent (taking it from 6% to 7%) and allocate THAT money to local governments and education.

So why are they asking the people of Michigan to do this?  Hell if I know.  They could have simply raised the fuel tax in a similar amount and funded the roads that way.  Oh wait, I know.... it would be raising taxes and God knows that these conservative tea party ass hats can't have a tax increase on their record.  So they'll pass the buck onto the people.  The people will vote for the tax increase and their hands will be clean.

Fuckers.

It's not bad enough that they're passing the buck along like a child that didn't finish his homework.  No, they're actively campaigning against it.    The vote is the very idea of a compromise.  No one is completely happy with it.  The left's major problem was that both a fuel tax and a sales tax increase hurts the poor the most.  Yes, everybody that drives will pay the same amount, but the percent of somebody's income is higher when they're poor.  So they made sure that the legislation will also include increasing the earned income tax credit.  Basically the poor (and only the poor) will save on their taxes... i.e. they'll either pay less or get more 'back' from the government.

Keep in mind, we're not talking small numbers here.  After all the shifting around, this will amount to a 1.2 billion dollar annual tax increase.  So the tea bagers are arguing that it's ridiculous to ever increase taxes.  And if taxes are to be increased, and a tax credit is being given to soften the blow, then that tax credit should be applied to everybody.  Which of course if it's given to everybody there would be no tax increase and no money for the fucking roads.  They want to pass extra legislation cutting corporate and wealthy people's taxes.    So they want to increase taxes on the middle class and have it pay for a wealthy tax cut... fuck the whole roads thing.

I'm going to vote for this.  I don't like being one of the people bailing out the legislature, but somebody has to man up and do it.  The roads are so bad that I'm considering adding miles to my trip to and from work just to avoid some really bad roads.  I'm sure others are doing this too... which means the good roads (these 'good' roads would be considered substandard in most locations!) will degrade all that muck quicker.  The roads need to be fixed.