Posted on 12/21/2015 12:53:47 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
INDIANAPOLIS — Maintaining the state’s roads and bridges is work fraught with obstacles and hazards. It doesn’t daunt Ed Soliday, a retired pilot and safety expert who loves telling stories and spinning metaphors.
“I’m evangelist, and may 1,000 angels sing when somebody comes to see the light,†said Soliday, Republican chairman of the House Roads and Transportation Committee, who aims to convince fellow lawmakers to set aside politics in search of sustainable road funding.
Don’t queue the music just yet.
Soliday’s ideas for raising cash for deteriorating roads and bridges include some politically unpalatable proposals, such as tax hikes and toll roads.
He has yet to roll out a proposal in detail. But it will include indexing to inflation the state’s fuel excise tax — last raised in 2002 — which could mean a 5-cent bump in the cost of a gallon of gas.
It includes a $1 per pack hike in the cost of cigarettes, to raise money for the state’s Medicaid program. That will free up money from the gasoline sales tax that’s now directed into the general fund.
Soliday also supports a study of the pros and cons of tolling Indiana’s two major interstates, I-65 and I-70, which could raise $365 million per year to expand those narrow, aging and dangerously crowded roadways.
Looking decades into the future, Soliday’s plan stands in stark contrast to competing proposals by Republican Gov. Mike Pence and Democratic House Leader Scott Pelath.
Both the Pence and Pelath plans, differing as they do, avoid talk of tax hikes and rely instead on shifted and borrowed dollars for a more immediate, short-term fix.
Soliday said he has a strategy to win them over to what he calls an ideal, bipartisan bill. It’s data.
Soliday’s argument relies on five years of data compiled by infrastructure experts, inside and outside the Pence administration. It’s a well-documented argument on the sorry state of the state’s roads and bridges, and how $1 billion extra is needed annually to fix them.
But Soliday knows that alone won’t work. Many of his GOP colleagues, including Pence, have signed a pledge to never raise taxes.
So he’s lined up a coalition of the willing that includes fellow fiscal conservatives such as the state Chamber of Commerce, the trucking industry, and big manufacturers. All argue that the state needs good roads to get goods moved.
Soliday’s got examples of other Republican states — including Georgia, Iowa, Nebraska, and Idaho — that pumped up gas taxes to boost road spending.
Polling data, he adds, shows that Hoosiers are willing to dole out more dollars for bridges and roads.
Soliday, 70, also has respect.
He came to politics after retiring to his hometown of Valparaiso. Local Republicans persuaded him to run.
Before then, Soliday was head of safety and security at United Airlines. It’s a job he took after two decades as a United pilot, and after flying helicopters in Vietnam.
Soliday was on duty when the 9/11 terrorists struck. U.S. officials ordered the nation’s airspace closed, leaving Soliday and his team to find places to land every United flight in the sky, as those planes ran out of fuel.
It took a data-driven mind, combined with pleading and cajoling a surprising number of airport officials who were reluctant to cooperate.
But it’s another story from his United career that Soliday tells to connect to his current mission.
It’s from when he took over the safety division at United and had to convince reluctant bosses of the need to spend more.
“I told my team, ‘If we don’t get the money, it’s because we didn’t sell it,’†he said. “It’s my job to bring people along.â€
Nanny State PING!
ASSHOLES. THIEVES.
States can not tax non residents - which is precisely what this is.
Indianans can pay the toll - BUT NO ONE ELSE SHOULD.
If you don’t already know: states that collect tolls on Interstates do not use the money for maintenance of the Interstate. They use it for bicycle trails, buses, trains, and assorted other IN STATE projects that have nothing to do with the highway. Additionally we all pay the Federal highway taxes, no Federal road should be tolled.
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
The legislators of Indiana - and Maryland and Delaware as well - are thieves who deserve to swing. They violate the most basic principle of the United States.
If that's the case, then I shouldn't be paying Sales Tax at the Denny's in Fairfax, Virginia.
So you refuse to pay sales tax when traveling to other states? Good luck with that.
States can tax anyone within their borders.If you don’t want to pay the Indiana tolls route through another state
I have paid tax - the federal gas tax.
Interstates are Federal roads, NOT state roads.
“Interstates are Federal roads, NOT state roads.”
Actually the States build the interstates highways and they are the property of the state they exist in.
“Interstate highways and their rights of way are owned by the state in which they were built. The last federally owned portion of the Interstate System was the Woodrow Wilson Bridge on the Washington DC Capital Beltway. The new bridge was completed in 2009 and is collectively owned by Virginia and Maryland[50] Maintenance is generally the responsibility of the state department of transportation. However, there are some segments of Interstate owned and maintained by local authorities.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Financing
“A public authority with jurisdiction over a toll facility shall use all toll revenues received from operation of the toll facility only for [] if the public authority certifies annually that the tolled facility is being adequately maintained, any other purpose for which Federal funds may be obligated by a State under this title” - 23 U.S.C. 129(a)(3)(A)(v)
This is a tax on non-residents to fund state projects.
Read the rest of Title 23. Buses, car pools, recreational trails.
The Federal Interstate System has been financed primarily through fuel taxes, not tolls (with the exception of interstate segments that pre-date the establishment of the Interstate System in 1956, for example: the Ohio Turnpike, Pennsylvania Turnpike, Massachusetts Turnpike and New Jersey Turnpike all pre-date the Eisenhower Interstate System).
This is taxation without representation. It’s obnoxious and intolerable.
Come And Take It.
“Actually the States build the interstates highways and they are the property of the state they exist in.”
This is easy to see when crossing state lines. A good example is on I-10 when driving west from Texas into New Mexico. Road turns into a goat trail.
Nice omission:
About 70 percent of the construction and maintenance costs of Interstate Highways in the United States have been paid through user fees, primarily the fuel taxes collected by the federal, state, and local governments. To a much lesser extent they have been paid for by tolls collected on toll highways and bridges. The Highway Trust Fund, established by the Highway Revenue Act in 1956, prescribed a three-cent-per-gallon fuel tax, soon increased to 4.5 cents per gallon. Since 1993 the tax has remained at 18.4 cents per gallon.
My point stands. They are Federal highways - maintained by States - States which receive Federal funding for this explicit purpose. Funding source by Federal gas tax.
The first toll roads in the U.S. were established in the 1790s. Look up the origin of the word "turnpike."
NSS.
Those road are not part of the Eisenhower Interstate System.
The Federal highway trust fund — financed by motor fuel taxes — is used to build major capital projects on the National Highway System (including the Interstates). The operation and maintenance of a highway after it is built are the responsibility of the state(s) where it is located.
And they receive funding from the Federal government.
Read the rest of Title 23.
These political pigs, Republican and Democrat alike, are starting to use cars like they used cigarettes. They look at them as an endless cash cow. But just like cigarettes, people will and are, using their cars less and less.
State troopers shouldn’t be able to give me a speeding ticket on an interstate highway either, federal troopers should be the only ones able to do that.
(just joshin’)
Druggie Mitch Daniels is the ‘brains’ behind this...he started the ball rolling there by selling off his toll road. Now the CATO types there appear to be salivating.
the gubmint and all the leftists would make every road a toll toad if they could. If The People don't push back this will become a reality.
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