Trivial pursuits
Tax hikes are never an easy sell in Colorado, even when they’re going to fund legitimate government functions such as building and maintaining roads, bridges and freeways. But anger the voters by diverting these grudgingly surrendered dollars to pet projects or trivial pursuits — to lower priority transportation “needs” such as bike paths or pedestrian-friendly communities, for instance — and you’re just begging for rejection.
Bad news for the good old boys at the Gazette: people who pass taxes get to decide why they pass, not people who don't pass them. The Gazette, and its readers, may think that building highways is the only legitimate use of tax dollars and they may think that bike and pedestrian paths are trivial pursuits, but their opinions don't count.
Harsh? No, just reality. Back when Referenda C & D were on the ballot, asphalt junkies like the Gazette editorialists and Gov. Owens decided that the money from D, the transportation issue, should go only to highway building. D failed. Why? Because when it comes to tax hikes, right-wing, anti-tax zealots don't decide what passes.
People in Boulder County liked Ref. C and gave it enough "yes" votes to overcome all of the "no" votes from El Paso County. We didn't like Ref. D and we didn't give it the boost it would have needed to pass.
It’ll be tough enough to sell the state’s “blue ribbon” transportation commission proposal to more than double what Colorado spends annually on transportation — a $1.5 billion annual increase that will have to be paid for with tax hikes or higher “fees.” But if the plan is hijacked by two Boulder liberals, who want to divert these transportation funds for social engineering experiments, the entire effort is in danger of coming apart completely.
Exactly backwards. If the anti-common sense conservatives hijack the proposal it will die like D.
That’s why we were dismayed to read in Sunday’s Gazette that a number of key legislators want to divert would-be road funds to discourage people from driving, as part of some anti car crusade. According to the story, a growing number of Statehouse Democrats, led by Reps. Jack Pommer and Claire Levy, feel that “transportation funding and environmental and growth concerns should be linked.” Instead of upgrading basic infrastructure, they want to use the money to advance a so called smart growth agenda.
And smart tax agenda.
How “smart” any agenda is that flies in the face of consumer preferences isn’t a question we’ll settle today. Whether such approaches really reduce congestion, or merely redistribute it, is also open to debate. But on the practical political level, we think it would be a mistake to divert money in these directions.
Like it or not, most Americans still cherish the mobility, freedom and flexibility personal transport provides. Some Coloradans, either by choice or necessity, use buses, light rail and other forms of public transport. A number can walk or ride their bicycles to work or school. And that’s OK (except that many of these people are being heavily subsidized by other people). But these people are, and likely will remain, in the minority.
But a necessary majority when it comes to raising taxes. And an absent majority if the taxes are going to subsidize highway expansion. And does the Gazette really think pedestrians and cyclists need heavy subsidies?
That’s the reality we’re handed and the situation we have to address. Seizing this as an opportunity to try to remake society along different lines, in order to fit some naïve Utopian notions about the way the rest of us should (but don’t) choose to live, is not a wise expenditure of precious resources or the legitimate business of the state. Diverting money from the concrete goal of improving battered roadways to the nebulous goal of getting people to abandon their cars will convince voters that politicians can’t be trusted with more of their money.
If people want to live in more pedestrian-friendly communities, they can seek them out. If people like to commute to work on a bicycle, they can do so. And if these folks want to smugly pat themselves on the back for being “smarter” than the rest of us, so be it.
But using public money and state power to coerce or entice people into making politically correct lifestyle choices is inappropriate. It’s generally a minority of professional planners and smart-growth activists who are pushing these we-know-best schemes.
They seem to have forgotten that I was against the tax increase, they're the ones who want to tax people and divert the money to their agenda.
These sorts of ideas may go over big in Boulder, where Pommer and Levy are from. But there’s a reason Boulder is the butt of so many jokes elsewhere in Colorado. Government’s job isn’t to tell people how to live, but to serve a limited set of needs that the private sector can’t provide. Straying too far from these fundamentals when setting the state’s transportation priorities will lead to a car crash at the ballot box.
That's OK.
It gets better. The initial report to the JBC only mentioned raising taxes (or fees) to pay for highway expansions. When the Blue Ribbon Panel's final report came out in January, it included the kind of sensible planning and demand management Claire and I suggested.
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