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€
Actually, all US Hiways and Interstate hiways are state roads. There are US Government specifications but the states own and build them
the question was decided in about 1825 when the first federal hiway was mandated from Cumberland Maryland to Vandalia Illinois.
I've never seen a federal snowplow on the Interstates. The contracts I bid as an estimator for the #1 highway contractor in America aren't let by the federal governemnt, but by state governments, often with a federal contribution.
IOW, We ALL pay (and, possibly, those within the the same State pay 2x).
My own $.02 was ‘keep the inter-State system toll-free...then I remembered the N.E. I-95 corridor. Geez, anymore, you can’t drive 5 mi before you’re paying another HUGE tax (aka toll) for the, so called privilege, of ‘speedy-travel’.
Course, if we were to break it down to Constitutional norms: Unless it’s a postal road, the Fed has no authority nor responsibility = State problem, and they can do as they wish. I am still free enough to not care by using or bypassing as *I* require/wish.
It’s not who acts, it’s who pays.
Read the statute. 90% Federal money.
We need to start heavily taxing politicians. Tax them for anything and everything.
Toll roads actually go back further than the 18th century, and not just in the US.
Sales tax. Everybody pays, in every state. BTW: there’s no such thing as - “Indianans”.
If a State builds a roadway with a value to travelers which is greater than the tolls charged, travelers will use it; otherwise, they will choose not to.
With enemy R’s like this......
OH, never mind, we gots state pensions to fund!
It’s actually 80 percent, nowadays.
Will do. And thanks for the link! :-)
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