New Jersey weighs crumbling roads, bridges vs gas tax hike
By Hilary Russ Montclair N.J. (Reuters) - The New York City suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, may be picturesque, but its roads are a mess. More than half of its 82 miles of roadways are in poor or fair condition. Just paving them would cost $9 million, not including curbs and other features, Montclair Mayor Robert Jackson told state lawmakers on Wednesday. "We learn to live with pot-holes, he said. "The economics are untenable." So are the politics, with elected officials reluctant to raise the state's gasoline tax, among the nation's lowest, to pay for repairs. Jackson and other local officials testified at the first of four hearings by the New Jersey Assembly's transportation committee to examine the state's transportation infrastructure. New Jersey, like many other U.S. states, is struggling with how to rebuild its crumbling roads, railways, bridges and other infrastructure. Overall, the nation should spend $3.6 trillion on infrastructure by 2020 to recover from decades of neglect, the American Society of Civil Engineers said last year. Part of the problem in some places is that gasoline taxes, which help pay for roads, have remained flat. At 14.5 cents per gallon, New Jersey's gas tax has not been raised since the late 1980s. Long-term, hiking tax rates alone likely won't fix the problem, because as vehicles become more fuel efficient, drivers use less gas. Thirty-six percent of New Jersey's bridges are structurally obsolete and rough roads cause $600 of repairs annually for the typical New Jersey driver, said Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, who testified at the hearing at Montclair State University. But New Jersey has already borrowed as much as it can for transportation projects. All of the gas tax collected, which funds the state's Transportation Trust Fund, goes to pay existing debt service costs instead of funding new projects. "The more we borrow, we're kicking the can down the road," Prieto told Reuters. The trust fund issues bonds to pay for capital projects by the state's transportation department and New Jersey Transit. Voters don't decide on whether to issue these bonds, and lawmakers appropriate the payments every year. The fund had an estimated $14.9 billion in outstanding debt in fiscal 2014, at a cost of more than $1 billion in debt service, the highest annual debt service costs since 1985, according to data from the fund. Debt service is scheduled to keep rising over the next 10 years. By next June, the fund might run out of money and not be able to pay debt service, let alone fund new projects. It has nearly gone bankrupt several times. Figuring out how to restore it will fall partly to Jamie Fox, a Democrat and former state transportation chief. He was confirmed on Monday after Republican Governor Chris Christie nominated him head New Jersey's transportation department. Grace Applegate-Tissiere, a former assistant state labor commissioner who testified on Wednesday as a private citizen, berated the lawmakers and said the hearings were a waste of time because they have known for years what options, including a gas tax hike, are before them. "It's political cover," she said. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Dan Grebler)
