Friday, October 13, 2006
Regional Tax Raises Its Ugly Head
The Pennsylvania Economy League loves the “bigger is always better” approach to solving problems. That’s especially true in the Pittsburgh area. They were in favor of the Regional Asset District that shifted funding for many cultural and recreational facilities to a Countywide sales tax. When trying to find a way to build two new stadiums, they pushed for a 10-county sales tax add on and a new regional authority to administer the money. Glad we ducked that one, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Allegheny Institute.
Now they are weighing in on the transportation problem in the state by proposing transportation regions with the authority to impose a gasoline tax. For a group that is so concerned about duplication of services, we wonder why they carried out this six-month study at the same time the Governor’s Task Force is preparing its recommendations to be released in mid-November.
In any case, the proposal would take a lot of heavy-lifting: getting the state to sign off, getting the affected counties to agree, coming up with a method of approving tax and fee increases (simple majority of all? majority in each county?), and the sticky Constitutional issue of using gas taxes for anything other than roads. That brings us back to the heart of the issue, which is what the Task Force is trying to tackle.
Who knows: this suggestion might be one that the Governor’s panel itself comes up with. But we don’t know yet. Allegheny County voters might like the approach of spreading the pain of the Port Authority out to other counties, but it is likely to receive a cold reception beyond County borders. Many Southwest region counties have their own transit service, in some cases, using outsourced drivers. That would have been a good plan for the Port Authority but the Chief Executive and the Governor intervened in negotiations and no outsourcing will happen under terms of the new contract. Little wonder all the talk is about finding more money for Port Authority transit. There is no hope of cutting costs.
Now they are weighing in on the transportation problem in the state by proposing transportation regions with the authority to impose a gasoline tax. For a group that is so concerned about duplication of services, we wonder why they carried out this six-month study at the same time the Governor’s Task Force is preparing its recommendations to be released in mid-November.
In any case, the proposal would take a lot of heavy-lifting: getting the state to sign off, getting the affected counties to agree, coming up with a method of approving tax and fee increases (simple majority of all? majority in each county?), and the sticky Constitutional issue of using gas taxes for anything other than roads. That brings us back to the heart of the issue, which is what the Task Force is trying to tackle.
Who knows: this suggestion might be one that the Governor’s panel itself comes up with. But we don’t know yet. Allegheny County voters might like the approach of spreading the pain of the Port Authority out to other counties, but it is likely to receive a cold reception beyond County borders. Many Southwest region counties have their own transit service, in some cases, using outsourced drivers. That would have been a good plan for the Port Authority but the Chief Executive and the Governor intervened in negotiations and no outsourcing will happen under terms of the new contract. Little wonder all the talk is about finding more money for Port Authority transit. There is no hope of cutting costs.
