Trying to understand how highways are funded..(key word: trying)

Forenote: This post is an educational process for me as much as it is for the reader, and the only "fact" one can be certain of reading the following post is that the process is very convoluted and opportunities for corruption abound. I am not expert on state transportation funding, so it won't hurt my feelings if I get corrected, in fact it's probably for the best, so don't just feel free, but feel obligated to do so!

On my post regarding ODOT's formal request for rail funding, Steve and I began debating the merits of including rail in what ODOT does, and so on. I was about to respond to his last comment when I realized it should probably illicit its own post..trying to understand how the Turnpike Authority and ODOT function, how they get funding, what they use it for, and so on. His comment was as follows:

"Auto transit is a great topic, but that turnpike you refer to is under a turnpike authority ... not directly a government program if I understand it correctly - more like a non-profit?

And I've always thought roads and the military are the best things for government to be involved in. And as conservative as I am, I'll defend government/authorities and their relationship with roads in Oklahoma. We have lots of land that need roads, but generally a small population to pay for it. If we want to have people travel through our great state (which is smack dab in the middle of the country) then 44, 35, and 40 need to be well maintained. Remember when the bridge at Weber Falls was destroyed by a wayward river boat?! The quickness that was repaired goes to show how important it is to keep our roads in tip-top shape."

I agree with Steve that auto transit is a great topic, and it's definitely one that is a lot more complex than it should be. The general idea of how the system is supposed to work makes perfect sense, but becomes a tangled web of contradictions, corruption, and incompetency when we're talking about reality. The formula for transit funding that ODOT uses goes like this: Federal $ + ODOT $ = Total budget; ODOT $ = maintenance expenses, Federal $ = new road construction. First of all, I think this formula speaks volumes to the massive maintenance cost of roads, second of all, the "formula" hardly describes how roads actually get funded. Oftentimes ODOT doesn't even have enough money to cover the costs of maintenance, and we must wait until a federal appropriation in order for a road to be repaired, and sometimes a federal appropriation doesn't quite cover the expense of a new road, and the Stimulus Package just further complicates the picture with additional overlaps in responsibility. With as many overlaps in responsibility for transit funding as there are, the finger of blame can be pointed at pretty much everyone. The feds, the State Legislature, ODOT, the corrupt bidding process, metropolitan coalitions like ACOG and INCOG that get ODOT funding, and so on.

As for the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, far from being a non-profit was created in the 1950s, predating the Federal Highway System and even ODOT, which wasn't even created until 1976. OTA's sole purpose today is collecting tolls to supplement maintenance that we give the State Legislature tax dollars to do anyway. Their slogan on their website is, "PIKEPASS - Your life just got easier." But the irony is that if you're trying to understand why they exist, who funds them, and what they do.. then your life just got harder. OTA does not determine what projects need to be done, they are directed to act based on appropriations from the State Legislature that first go through ODOT. Studies are done by ODOT, whose responsibility it is to make sure projects are included in long-range transportation plans. The one and only way in which it is an independent arm of ODOT is that it's authorized to issue bonds to fund Turnpike projects, which aren't considered part of the State's debt. Tolls are collected to pay down on the bonds, which in 2005, tolls brought in $192 million. That year there was a $90 million debt payment, $60 million in operating expenses, and the remaining balance went to fund an $80 million Capital Plan. ODOT on the other hand has a $1.2 billion operating budget.

If you read OTA's website, they have an explanation of their funding that looks ridiculously incriminating of the powers that be in the State Capitol. ODOT gets around 5% of total appropriations, and according to the Federal Highway Administration, Oklahoma ranks 2nd in how much federal money we divert to non-transportation uses. In fact, we divert about one quarter of our total Motor Fuel Tax money that we receive from Washington to non-transportation uses. Supposedly, Kansas invests three times as much as Oklahoma does into transportation, making it a crying shame how transportation is funded in Oklahoma AND anyone whose driven all the way up to KC knows that their tolls are higher than ours.

There is no easy way to tell what "non-transportation" uses our Motor Fuel Tax money go towards. I'll keep digging and see what I can find.

Tom Coburn's independent report on the Stimulus

Tom Coburn has a really good (and witty) report on his website that details some of the best Stimulus projects.

"I see Stimulus checks..."
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Some of these projects that he's identified as Top 100 Projects I actually support. For instance, repairing a boardwalk in Delaware with $1 million sounds like a great Stimulus project to me because of the economy activity generated by active boardwalks. However..some of these are just insane and I'm glad that at least Coburn is talking about them.

1. Residents in Perkins, OK are actually paying a 60% increase in utility fees due to the city getting Stimulus funds for a wastewater treatment facility that the State was going to pay the full $5 million for until the city got Stimulus funds for it. Because of the stipulations attached to the funds, the cost for the project went up to $8 million while the Stimulus funds were only $1 million, leaving the small town of Perkins to pick up another $2 million.

2. $1 Billion with a B to FutureGen, an Illinois company that was a crony of Blagojevich's as well as Chairman Obama, that has a plan to build a clean coal power plant using technology that was cutting edge 5 years ago. Sounds like a great plan except the only problem is that it is not economically feasible due to major technological advances made towards clean coal that are much better than the plan for this facility.

4. A backup runway for Jack Murtha Airport in Johnstown, PA aka the "Airport to Nowhere." Stimulus funds break down like so: $18 million for a backup runway large enough to land any plane in the U.S., $7 million for a traffic control tower, a $14 million hangar, and an $8 million radar system. The only problem: The airport gets 20 passengers a day. In fact the only thing the airport won't have is airplanes with anyone in them. Even more insane, this isn't even the beginning. Since 1990 this airport has received over $150 million in federal funding.

5. $3.4 million for a turtle crossing facility along US 27 in Florida. The highway has the highest incidence of turtle roadkill deaths in the world, but that has virtually been eliminated by a fence that the locals have put up. Now the Stimulus is giving them millions to reinforce the fence and do a tunnel under the road for the turtle crossing. Tom Coburn quips, "Why did the turtle cross the road? To get Stimulus money."

7. Over $1 million for a public safety guardrails at nonexistent Optima Lake in the Oklahoma Panhandle. At least the good thing is that if someone is devious enough to get through the Stimulus guardrail, they probably won't drown from falling into Optima Lake. Coburn's document includes a photo of nonexistent Optima Lake as well as this description from the Army Corps website: "The water level in the lake has never reached normal pool. Visitors should be aware that the lake's level can be very low. Depending on rainfall and evaporation rates, the lake may offer no water-based recreation and may not be suitable for swimming, fishing, boating or other activities. Visitors should come for the quiet natural setting-with or without water in the lake area.”

9. Ten thousand Social Security Administration checks to deceased people. Some who were never even in the SSA system, such as Italian, Romolo Romonini, and a check for a James Hagner's mother, who has not been in the system since the Johnson administration. Coburn includes a picture of the little kid from The Sixth Sense with the caption, "I see Stimulus checks..."

10. The Town of Union, NY is getting $600,000 for a homeless problem that it doesn't have, money that it didn't apply for, and doesn't know what to do with because it does not even have city services for a nonexistent homeless population. HUD told them to get creative to solve their homeless problem, but the only homeless problem Union, NY has ever had was finding a home for this Stimulus money. The problem was solved by absorbing it into an existing program, which helped them avoid having to increase their work force. The only problem that was solved here, creatively, was how to spend money that they have never gotten before, never asked for before, and have no purpose for.

Let's have a round of fawning over Chairman O.

Faux New Deal..what does it mean for us?

What we need is a stimulus. $780,000,000,000 sounds like a lot of dough, but fortunately we're only talking in American dollars. I'll break it down, dollar-by-dollar..

• Tax cuts ($275 billion)

This will include a $2,500 tax credit for higher education. Wow. I seriously doubt that this will actually provide very much significant relief for students paying their way through college. My parents paid over $20,000 for my first two years at OU, not including the house I shared with a few friends my soph year. How does a $2,500 tax credit begin to help my parents whose investments have tanked in the last year? Are these people serious? Also includes a $7,500 tax credit for first-time home buyers. This is basically the same as a government-issued ARM. We went after all of the banks who issued ARMs, but now we're going to do the exact same thing for the good of the economy. We're going to tell the newlywed 20-something couple that should really be renting for now to go ahead and buy that new cookie-cutter home out in the burbs even though they can't afford it in this economy, because we're going to give you a one-time tax credit on $7,500 that will expire after this year. Talk about promulgating the cause.

• Education investments ($141.6 billion)

$120 billion in blank checks to school districts to essentially do whatever they want with as long as it can fall under the following categories: preventing cutbacks to key services, using existing federal formulas, meeting key performance measures, and my personal favorite--providing high-priority needs such as safety or critical needs, which may include education. The rest of the 141.6 goes into increasing the Pell grant by $500 (as if a majority of the population will ever see a penny of that) and "modernizing education" whatever that means. I wish someone would explain "modernizing education." I didn't realize it was education that was clearly still in the stone age. In that case, someone, please bring us out of the stone age!

• Health care investments ($112.1 billion)

Obama has actually been so open (a rare thing for him) to allude that this will be needed in order to prepare America for government health care. I really think it might be time for America to have socialized health care, because the current system has left plenty uncovered and we know how tragic it can be when that happens in the most dire situations. Thinking prudently, we as a nation spend way more of our GDP on health care than any other western nation. Thinking principally, today we live in a world where society must be able to provide the following basic needs for its people: food, shelter, and now..medical care. Because of the exponential rise in medical costs due to unnecessary litigation, you won't get medical care unless you can afford the risk you represent to the current system. That needs to change.

• Welfare programs ($102 billion)

This is mostly to cover the expected increase in welfare programs. The largest portion is to go towards an increase in unemployment benefits, the rest will go into Food Stamps and additional Medicaid insurance.

• Infrastructure investments ($90 billion)

This is the small portion that is supposed to stimulate the economy and is creating all of the jobs Obama says that we'll need, or else. This is also what James Inhofe, not exactly my favorite Senator, was alluding to when he said the stimulus is 93% spending and 7% stimulation (which is the bizarre kind of statement only our beloved Senator Inhofe could make) which sounds like something a Sex-Ed-teacher-turned-Economic-Advisor would say. But I think he's spot-on in a way: So much money is being spent, but so little of it is actually intended to "stimulate" the economy. The federal breakdown is $31 billion for bringing infrastructure up to energy standards, $30 billion for highway construction, $19 billion for public works, and $10 billion for rail. To which I say.. you have to be kidding me, right? I would think that Obama of all politicians would understand the negative impact on urban planning and the entire nation for that matter that highways have inflicted, and in order to get out of this economic slump, we are to build more?

Oklahoma is only going to get $465 million of this $90 billion..that would be a big in-your-face for voting against Obama by the widest margin. We, the 28th most-populous state, are recieving 1/180th of this money. Is nobody up in arms about that? What can we even do with $465 million? That would build us like, one freeway. And you can forget any rail coming out of this. Tulsa and OKC are going to fight till the death for the money to put it to good use, and then they'll rise up and realize the Turnpike Authority gobbled it up. Phil Tomlinson, the director of the Turnpike Authority, has already told us where we can expect every penny of it to go: widening the Creek Turnpike and the Kilpatrick Turnpike. Phwew, because that will help with those nasty traffic jams that plague the Kilpatrick Turnpike.

• Energy investments ($58 billion)

Most of this is to go toward funding an electric smart grid. I don't even know what that is, and neither do 99.4% of the population, so I'll just skip this. If Obama told me without this we would be living in the dark for 20 years, I would believe him and send frantic emails to my family's congressman.

• Telecommunications investments ($3.85 billion)

Wireless broadband deployment grants, broadband data collection, and DTV-to-analog converter boxes. 1, I thought Al Gore already invented the Internet; and 2, I thought we already funded the DTV conversion? There isn't the possibility some of this is redundant spending? No way!

What a rip-off.