High road on potholes

It won´t be easy for lawmakers to hide from the real cost this time around, which is how it should be. And it´s unlikely the House, Senate and Governor´s Office can cobble together a plan to address decades of road repair neglect with budget gimmicks. They will need to make hard money decisions.

There were many reasons voters rejected the constitutional amendment. For starters it was sloppy legislation, rushed through in the waning days of the Legislature last year and loaded with cynical sweeteners that leaders from both parties hoped would induce even skeptics to hold their nose and vote yes. Then too, the measure was a confusing amalgam of taxes on sales, fuel and income, and if that weren´t enough there were largely unknown bills tied to voter approval of the constitutional amendment. And they expected this to pass? In brief, the measure would have increased the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent, removed the sales tax from fuel sales, increased the state´s earned income tax credit and dribbled out some money to education. Overall, it would have increased taxes by $1.9 billion, with $1.3 billion allocated in some measure to roads.

All of this, and what people really want is better roads. One of the odd provisions of the rejected measure would have used new revenues to pay off existing road debt. We´re all for sound fiscal management, but the roads are a crisis. The repayment plan was like a homeowner with gaping holes in the roof deciding to pay off the mortgage before starting repairs. If you have an accountant (the governor is an accountant) maybe he or she endorses such prudent fiscal policy. But you family won´t.

It´s hard to know exactly what really motivated the voters. Turn out was relatively low — 1.8 million cast ballots. Exit polls elicited the civic-sounding response that the Legislature ought to do its job. But there was an unmistakable undercurrent of don´t raise my taxes. These people want better roads. But they don´t want to pay. But they still want better roads. And they still don´t want to pay. They should be legislators.

Betwixt and between. This is where the Michigan Chamber of Commerce hid during the statewide debate. Incredibly it took no position on the ballot measure, restating in a post-election interview with the Huffington Post its reason for its stance.

Richard Studley, the chamber´s president and CEO, attributed the decision to “differences of opinion about Proposal 1.” Construction companies supported the measure; retailers and wholesalers worried about the effect of a higher sales tax on their sales.

At its very core, the chamber opposes almost any tax initiative. And to say that because its approximately 6,700 members aren´t unified in their position suggests that there is agreement among all of its members on the 40 initiatives outlined in its 2015- 16 legislative priorities, which of course is improbable.

Since the Proposal 1 defeat, the chamber is calling on the Legislature to increase infrastructure funding. Studley told Huff Post that it would support funding the roads through fuel taxes or motor vehicle registration fees. Certainly, not all members support this approach.

Unlike the business community he coddles, Gov. Rick Snyder campaigned hard for Proposal 1, and some post-election reports deemed him as one of the losers. The characterization is unfair. Snyders know the state´s Third-World roads are affecting its economic resurrection, and more to the point he understands the priorities of the legislature — reelection.

The return ticket to Lansing for Republicans is an anti-tax orthodoxy which affects good governance the way steroids affect baseball. In baseball, the pressure to perform — to stay viable in the game — induced players to indulge in dangerous, destructive behavior. Players refusing to do drugs were at a disadvantage.

The same with Michigan´s Republican Legislature. Do the right thing: Acknowledge that repairing the roads will require new revenue streams and will mean facing reelection threats from the zealous anti-tax, anti-spending wing of the party.

In his just published memoir, Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez writes about his pitching rivalry with Roger Clemens, long suspected of using performance drugs, which Clemens, of course, denies.

Martinez did not pump up with steroids and cites as one of his reasons his fear of the shrinking testicles side effects. Understandable. But pitching clean, he lost out to Clemens for the 1998 Cy Young Award. Of his rival, Martinez writes: “It was like someone had performed a magic trick on the Rocket (Clemens). I heard later that the trainer who accused him of using steroids said that it was in the middle of the 1998 season when he gave Roger his first shot in the butt.”

The Cy Young loss was the cost of following the better path. Martinez won the pitching award the following year and again in 2000.

There´s a lesson here for legislators. You can win on the high road, though in Michigan it´s full of potholes. But first you´ve got to take it.