Rendell fails to effectively deal with PA highway crisis
The collapse of the I-35 bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul has focused a harsh spotlight on the deteriorating condition of America’s roads and bridges. As an older state, and a state with an above average number of both bridges and miles of highway, the issue has special relevance in Pennsylvania.
Shortly after his re-election last November Governor Ed Rendell proclaimed Penn’s Woods to be in the throes of a transportation crisis. The proposed solution was typically Rendellian: more taxes. Adding to the complexity of the issue, the state’s mass transit systems entered their annual funding crisis.
All of this was thrown into the caldron of an overall state budget crisis and from that noxious mix emerged a new highway transportation funding bill. In the days and weeks since, the new bill has proven to be the most ill-conceived, unworkable, and poorly written piece of legislation since the gambling expansion bill. It is destined to cause more headaches for Pennsylvania than problems solved.
The first problem is that, although they won’t admit it, the main goal of the Rendell Administration was to funnel hundreds of millions more dollars into the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) and its equally under-performing cousins across the state. Additional state dollars will help stabilize mass transit system budgets for now, but the legislation did virtually nothing to address the underlying causes of the systems’ fiscal woes: bloated bureaucracies; run-away patronage; fiscally irresponsible labor contracts; and general ineptitude. Funding was simply given to the transit agencies without any requirement that they clean up their acts. This virtually guarantees there will be massive funding shortfalls a few years down the road – at which time their hands will be out for more state dollars.
In the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse Governor Ed Rendell was quick to criticize the state’s representatives in Washington, D.C. for failing to deliver enough money to adequately address the state’s highway and bridge needs. What Rendell did not say is that during his first term in office he diverted hundreds of millions of federal dollars sent to Pennsylvania for road and bridge projects to balance past deficit spending by SEPTA, Port Authority Transit (PAT) and other public transportation systems.
Then there is the issue of untold millions wasted on projects of dubious value. Chief among them are the tunnel being constructed under the Allegheny River connecting downtown Pittsburgh with the North Shore, site of Heinz Field, PNC Park and a soon-to-be-built casino. In south central Pennsylvania millions have been spent on studies for a regional light rail system that would not even run through the area’s growing population centers. And then, there are countless federal “earmarks” or special projects approved at the behest of the state’s U.S. Senators and Congressmen inserted into past federal transportation funding bills that diverted badly needed funds away from core highway projects.
Meanwhile, a key funding component of the new transportation bill, the tolling of I-80, is shaky. Not only must federal approval be given for the state to toll the highway, but influential members of the state’s Congressional delegation from Northwestern Pennsylvania have launched an all-out effort to block the tolling. They correctly point out the funding scheme represents a transfer of wealth from largely rural, northwestern Pennsylvanians who will pay the tolls to Philadelphia where it will be used to subsidize SEPTA.
Rendell, as has become his custom recently, responded to opposition of I-80 tolling by Congressmen Phil English (R-Erie) and John Peterson (R-Venango) by name calling. “The guy doesn’t know one bloody thing about what he is talking about,” Rendell said of Peterson to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He called Peterson “irresponsible,” adding the move was a “political cop-out.”
Sorry governor. The real cop-out was your refusal to require SEPTA, PAT and the other transit agencies across the state to clean up their own acts before you attempted to plow hundreds of millions more of our tax dollars into their coffers. The real cop out was your use of federal money earmarked for roads and bridges for other purposes. The real cop out was your refusal to cut wasteful spending and put existing tax dollars to good use in repairing roads and bridges..
Perhaps Congressman Peterson isn’t “the guy who doesn’t know one bloody thing about what he is talking about.” Perhaps governor, you might find that guy in your mirror.