Streetsblog Capitol Hill

We’ve been watching how governors around the country are getting extra “creative” as they try to keep their transportation budgets solvent. Yesterday we witnessed an excise tax on bicycles floated in Washington State.

Scott Walker has plans to spend more than $6 billion on highways in Wisconsin in the next two years, and he's going to get the state's utility customers to help foot the bill. Image: NYPost

But the award for the wildest funding scheme may go to renowned highway spender Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, who wants to raise $6 billion for the state’s roads by selling 37 publicly owned power plants. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported this week on Walker’s bizarre plan keep the highway money flowing, and send the bill to utility customers:

The move could also have the unexpected effect of linking the prices paid by some utility customers to the financing of the state’s road system. Bonds for the road work would go through even if the state property was not ultimately sold.

What are these projects that are so tremendously important the state’s assets must be sold to pay for them?

Well, Wisconsin is going to blow a considerable chunk of that change on a project called the Zoo Interchange, outside of Milwaukee. This $1.7 billion — yes, billion with a “b” — project would be one of the most expensive interchanges ever built. Walker specifically mentioned that it was one of his two top priorities in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.

Last year a coalition of nonprofit groups in Milwaukee filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state, charging that the project was discriminatory because it does nothing for transit-dependent Milwaukee residents. Dennis Grzezinski, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the Zoo Interchange is “just about the most expensive approach they could have taken.”

This from the same guy who couldn’t stomach passenger rail in his state because it would require a subsidy of a few million dollars a year.

Sad to say, Wisconsin’s plan is not much worse than the ones being promoted in other parts of the Midwest.

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One of the top goals of the national transportation reform movement is to get state DOTs to spend their money more wisely. The feds distribute tens of billions of dollars to state DOTs each year with very few strings attached. But for every state like Massachusetts or Tennessee that’s decided to shift toward building walkable streets and away from highway construction, there are plenty of state DOTs that continue to build very expensive, sprawl-inducing roads, even though they can’t afford to maintain what they already have.

ODOT Director Jerry Wray, a career-long friend of asphalt. Photo: Toledo Blade

In many states, big decisions about how to spend money have less to do with the actual public benefits of a given project than the rewards that accrue to elected officials. With billions of dollars at stake, transportation departments can be used to reward favored constituencies or to achieve other political goals. Witness Birmingham’s $4.7 billion zombie highway, which won’t do much besides line the pockets of politically-connected companies. Or how about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision in 2010 to kill the ARC rail tunnel connection to New York’s Penn Station, which threw away years of preparation so Christie could win national attention from movement conservatives and appeal to his suburban base by diverting the funds to roadbuilding.

Sometimes transportation decisions amount to little more than cronyism, which is never more obvious than when a governor hires an industry lobbyist to run his state DOT. For this series, which we’re calling “The Revolving Door,” Streetsblog looked at three states where governors have gone so far as to put a lobbyist for the roadbuilding or energy industries in charge of transportation policy.

To kick off the Revolving Door series, we’re taking a look at Ohio Department of Transportation Director Jerry Wray, nicknamed the “asphalt sheriff,” who managed to sandwich a lobbying position at an asphalt industry group in between his two terms as ODOT head.

“ODOT is a machine for the road contractors. Everything that they do is intended to produce more gas tax revenue so there can be more revenue for ODOT.”

- Ken Prendergast, All Aboard Ohio

Wray first filled ODOT’s top office under Republican Governor George Voinovich in the 1990s, when he was often accused of favoring the asphalt industry, according to the Columbus Dispatch. After “retiring” from ODOT in 1999, he became vice president of Flexible Pavements of Ohio, an asphalt industry lobbying group. He was then brought back into the public sector when Republican Governor John Kasich took office in 2009. Major road builders like Columbus-based Kokosing Construction and its founder Bill Burgett were among Kasich’s largest donors.

Right away, Wray and Kasich let Ohioans know they had new priorities for the state — the kind of priorities that would certainly please Wray’s former employer. In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Kasich said he and Wray shared a similar philosophy on transportation: namely, a deeply partisan obsession with obstructing the state’s passenger rail plans — the “3C” train service connecting Columbus, Cincinnati, and Columbus Cleveland that the Obama administration had pledged $400 million to start up. “His people that he will bring on will understand: no games, no politics, no train,” Kasich said of Wray. Killing the train — which would have cost the state a paltry $17 million annually to operate, less than the state currently spends cleaning and maintaining highway rest areas — was Kasich’s first act after being elected.

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Of all the anti-transit zealots in office right now, Ohio Governor John Kasich really stands out from the rest.

His first notable action as governor was to return $400 million in federal dollars for passenger rail between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. But as we all know, he wasn’t the only governor to take the opportunity to make a political statement at his constituents’ expense.

Ohio Governor John Kasich is fighting a relentless war on transit and cities. Photo: Toledo Blade

Kasich took it further. In what Jon Stewart has referred to as Kasich’s “special blend of dickishness,” he dismissed project supporters as being part of a “train cult.” Then he appointed a former asphalt industry lobbyist to run the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Even given all that, however, his latest move is pretty brazen. The governor has zeroed in on the state’s most high-profile transit project: the Cincinnati streetcar. And he has launched an unprecedented campaign to bring it to a screeching halt.

In his zeal to destroy the project, John Kasich actually had a rider inserted into the state budget that prevented any state money from being used on the Cincinnati streetcar. It’s not exactly clear that the state has the legal authority to single out a municipality in order to deny funding in this way. Some observers have speculated that this will leave the state vulnerable to litigation.

“Kasich came in and just started canceling this stuff left and right,” said Cincinnati blogger and transit activist Randy Simes. “He has a clear bend against transit.”

On Tuesday, ODOT (led by “Asphalt Sheriff” Jerry Wray) went further still. The state board that is responsible for allocating transportation money — TRAC — stripped $51 million, or 100 percent, of the funding recommended for the Cincinnati Streetcar.

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Wisconsin Governor-Elect Scott Walker has pledged to kill the planned high speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison. If current Governor Jim Doyle doesn’t beat him to it.

Doyle was instrumental in bringing $810 million of federal stimulus dollars to the state to build the rail line. Walker campaigned on a “No Train” platform, and Doyle has, apparently, had a hard time figuring out how to proceed with the rail project during the remainder of his term.

Walker Goes to the Huddle After Doyle Flip-Flops

Scott Walker won the election on an anti-train platform. Image: WUWM

First, the weekend before the election – with Walker polling ten points ahead of his Democratic opponent – Doyle quietly signed a deal with federal officials committing the state to spend the entire $810 million on the rail project. He didn’t make his actions public until the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel confronted him about it. The agreement could make it more expensive for Walker to pull out of the project, if he had to pay back money that had already been spent.

Then, as Walker was talking to lawyers about how to react to the governor’s actions, Doyle suddenly halted construction on the rail line. The state DOT asked contractors and consultants to “temporarily interrupt their work for a few days,” according to Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi. Work was already underway on upgrading tracks and designing a station in Madison.

The action brought into sharp relief the rail line’s potential impact on jobs. Contractors immediately started planning layoffs. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Mayor – and Walker’s opponent in the governor’s race – Tom Barrett indicated he’s considering taking legal action if the death of the rail line ends up taking out a newly renovated manufacturing plant that the city spent $3 million on. The plant was going to make the trains that would run on the line.

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Dear Governor-Elect Kasich,

Congrats on your victory in the Ohio governor’s race this week. You’ve got a tough job on your hands and I don’t envy you, taking the reins in a state with an $8 billion budget deficit and a 10 percent unemployment rate. I didn’t vote for you, but I considered it. Even so, I think I join the vast majority of Ohio residents when I wish you tremendous success.

Even though you only won election a few days ago, I hope you don’t mind, I have a little bone to pick with you. I was more than a little dismayed to hear that in your post-election victory speech, you said Ohio’s plan to connect Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati via passenger rail was “dead,” and that “passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future.”

Kasich campaigning in the Cleveland suburbs. Photo: 19 Action News

Forgive my confusion, but I fail to see how returning $400 million in federal money is the right decision for a state with our record on unemployment. According to the Ohio Department of Transportation, that infusion of cash would have immediately created 255 jobs. The U.S. Department of Commerce suggested it would result in a total of 8,000 spin-off jobs.

But, of course, the 3C Corridor wasn’t just about creating jobs; it was mainly about moving people. Now, I understand some people have complained that the plan was for conventional-speed, as opposed to high-speed, rail. Some skeptics have wondered whether Ohioans would be willing to sacrifice the convenience of their private automobiles for a mode that was likely to take longer and force them to operate on a fixed schedule.

I feel compelled to point out, however, that this statement makes a number of assumptions that do not necessarily represent the perspective of the state as a whole. For example, are you aware that at the time of the latest census, 374,000 Ohio households did not have a private vehicle available to them? This represents more than eight percent of the state’s households.

It frustrates me when I hear people make unqualified statements such as “no one will ride it” because I, for one, would ride it. See, I own a car but prefer other modes of transportation. I like to bike and take public transit. It saves me money and it makes me feel like I’m doing my part to preserve the environment.

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