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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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is no friend to rail transportation. He won the governorship based on the rallying cry of “No Train,” a concise summary of his position on the planned upgrade to the Milwaukee-to-Madison line. And we all know how that one ended.

A rendering of the Milwaukee Streetcar. Photo: Light Rail Now!

When Wisconsin voters went out last week and affirmed his leadership, it prompted some concern about the future of another important rail project in the Cheese State: the Milwaukee Streetcar.

But while Walker got a chance to flex his obstructionary muscles on the president’s inter-city passenger rail plan, the Milwaukee streetcar may be outside his reach. The reason is a 1990s civil rights complaint filed by the city of Milwaukee. It makes an interesting case study in how a municipality can triumph over an anti-transit governor.

Back in the late 1990s, Scott Walker was a member of the state legislature. The “No Train” governor of the day was Tommy Thompson.

Congress had awarded $289 million for a Milwaukee transit project 10 years earlier. The region flirted with the idea of a busway between Milwaukee and suburban Waukesha, but Thompson quashed the idea, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In the late 1990s, the region’s leaders got together and came up with a plan recommending the money be split between a Milwaukee light rail system, an expansion of I-94 and expanding bus service to Waukesha County. The plan was agreed upon by local leaders and approved by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

But according to the MJS, Walker and a group of suburban Republicans convinced Thompson to issue a mandate that none of the money would be used for light rail.

In response, City Alderman Bob Bauman, an attorney, spearheaded an administrative civil rights complaint against the state through U.S. DOT. The document alleged that by eliminating transit routes while preserving funding for highways, the state’s directive was discriminatory against the many carless African Americans that live in Milwaukee.

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A $125 million “road to nowhere.” Another $100+ million for a bypass around a town of 2,711. Welcome to the era of “fiscal austerity” in Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.

Potholes and rough roads cost each Wisconsin driver an additional $281 annually, according to a new report. But they won't get any relief under Scott Walker's budget. Instead, they're getting more highways. Photo: The Daily Reporter

A new report from the Public Interest Research Group examines $1.2 billion in proposed highway projects green-lighted by the Walker administration while the state rolls back funding for transit, education and local communities.

The findings indicate that in all his zeal for cutting public spending, Walker has a blind spot for highways. Despite a $3.6 billion budget deficit, Walker’s Wisconsin is forging ahead with a fortified highway budget. The Walker administration has proposed a 13 percent increase in highway construction. Meanwhile, $10 million in transit cuts have been proposed, in addition to a reduction in $48 million for maintaining local roads.

Wisconsin is hardly crying out for new road capacity. The state already ranks 13th in the nation on transportation spending per capita, or 24 percent above the national average, the report notes. So it’s not clear why highways have garnered such a privileged position in the state budget, said report co-author Bruce Speight.

“This is spending gone wild on questionable projects at a time when we should be prioritizing maintaining our existing infrastructure and transit,” he said.

Of the four projects analyzed by WISPIRG, the group found all of them to be justified by outdated data and generally of questionable merit.

I-90 Widening

Wisconsin is planning to widen 45 miles of I-90 south of Madison to the Illinois border from four lanes to six. The project is slated to cost $715 million, but local press reports have put it at as a high as $1.5 billion. PIRG reports that the project was justified using traffic data from 2002. Furthermore, crash data indicate safety problems could be remedied with less expensive interventions at interchanges.

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This article was written by Steve Hiniker, executive director of 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin, and was reprinted with permission of that organization. It originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget has more than enough pain to go around. Schools get hit with more than $800 million in cuts over the next two years. Recycling programs are not funded. Health care for seniors and the poor is slashed. Local road aids are cut. Some transit systems may not survive the proposed reductions. State revenue sharing is going down, putting more pressure at the local level to cover the costs of cuts to state aids – and without raising property taxes.

Scott Walker is fighting for you, highway builders! Photo: Will's Words of Wisdom

It’s called austerity.

Unless you happen to be a road builder.

Then this budget is called a bonanza.

While other programs are cut, highway expansion projects totaling more than $400 million get the green light. Highway expansion raids the general fund of more than $140 million, crushing any arguments that “highway users pay for the costs of roads.” In fact, the general fund and property taxes will pay about half of roadway costs in the future. So-called user fees are soon to be eclipsed by decidedly nonuser fees.

When you look at the increase in highway spending, it is also important to pay attention to where the money goes. Local road aids are cut, meaning that even though there is more money going for major highway expansion, there is less money for local units of government to fix those bone-jarring potholes that crop up every spring. Maintenance dollars for highways are down as well.

Walker has said that the highway expansion is needed for our economic recovery. The governor is putting a lot of faith – and capital – in having superhighways be the cornerstone of the state’s economic recovery. After all, he could have put the money in building better communities with better schools as a basis of economic development.

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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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