Posted on 10/22/2014 10:38:12 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In two weeks, voters decide which party will control the Senate and House, as well as choosing 36 governors and 6,049 state legislators.
In some places voters will also be making transportation policy directly through ballot initiatives and referenda.
A common factor in three states, Texas, Maryland and Wisconsin, is the attempt to ensure that some tax revenues are used only for transportation and aren’t diverted to other purposes.
Texas voters will decide the fate of Proposition 1, a constitutional amendment that would earmark revenue from the state’s oil and gas severance tax to the state highway fund. (You can see a TV ad from the forces supporting the proposition above.)
Both Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott and his Democratic opponent, Wendy Davis, support the measure.
Two state lawmakers who support Proposition 1, Republican Sen. Robert Nichols, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, and Democratic Rep. Joe Pickett, chairman of the House Select Committee on Transportation Funding, argue that a new revenue source is needed because the state’s gasoline tax and vehicle registration fees, used to pay for roads and highways, haven’t been increased since at least 1991.
The measure also offers an alternative to more tolls on Texas highways, which voters are beginning to resist. Both Abbot and Davis have opposed more tolling.
In Maryland, Question 1 on the ballot asks voters if they want to amend the state constitution to establish a fund to be used only for transportation, except when the governor declares a fiscal emergency and the legislature by a three-fifths vote allows the fund to be tapped.
It is an effort to stop governors from dipping into the Transportation Trust Fund to balance the state budget.
But critics say the measure is weak. Republican state legislator Herb McMillan, from Anne Arundel County, told the Baltimore Sun, “It has as much strength as a wet paper bag. A hamster could get out of it.”
Wisconsin has a similar constitutional amendment on its Nov. 4 ballot.
In Louisiana, voters decide whether to use state funds to capitalize a state infrastructure bank. Thirty-three other states already have federally-funded banks, which make low-interest loans to local governments for road building.
Finally one local ballot measure is of interest to supporters of mass transit. Voters in Clayton County, Ga., which is south of Atlanta, are deciding whether they want their county to become part of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) and raise the local sales tax by one percent to pay for buses to connect to the city’s mass transit system.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
When is Maryland ever NOT in a fiscal emergency?
When we have our rare republican governor. One of the first things OMalley did upon taking office was to spend the reserves that Ehrlich had managed to create during the previous 4 years (this was before the recession started). I also believe this is a liberal thing and not just a MD thing.
Voters and legislators determined education policy, social recognition, and many other things in the past 10 years. They did this in an effort to stop the intrusion of statism and federal thuggery.
How'd that work out?
We really need to awaken to the danger that our votes must be MADE to matter by the de-nutting of the judiciary and out of control federal executive and bureaucratic branches.
The EPA, for instance, ought not to be allowed to make law.
Thanks for the ping to this issue. So, does McMillan think voters should not vote for this measure?
Also, is McMillan a conservative or a RINO?
Anyone?
But we have our sanctuary-state undocumenti to support. Who is going to propose a plan for illegals to maintain taxpayers' lawns in exchange for their upkeep, depending on how much they receive from the taxpayers and how much tax the taxpayer has contributed to the Freak State? There must be an algorhythm for that.
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