Here & Now

First Look: Vinehout, Kapenga Debate Transportation Funding

Frederica Freyberg:

In our First Look tonight, a scathing audit of Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation got a hearing this week at the capitol. Among the highlights of the audit, the cost of 16 ongoing major highway projects increased by $3. 1 billion over original estimates. This was because the DOT did not take inflation into account. The proportion of state highways rated in good condition decreased from 53.5% in 2010 to 41% in 2015. And the proportion of state of highways in good condition in Wisconsin was considerably lower according to the audit than in six other Midwestern states. The airing of these and other facts that auditors found come in the midst of wrangling over how to fill a billion dollar shortfall in transportation funding in Wisconsin and disagreement over raising for example, the gas tax, to generate more funds. But now given the audit results legislators learned that the billion dollar hole is also deeper. So one lawmaker suggested Wisconsin stop digging that hole and stop talking about how to increase funding for transportation until the agency does better. Delafield Republican Senator Chris Kapenga joins us in Milwaukee. Democratic State Senator from Alma, Kathleen Vinehout sits on the audit committee and she is here in Madison. She also calls out the DOT for its lack of transparency and oversight. And welcome to both of you.

Kathleen Vinehout:

Pleasure to be here.

Chris Kapenga:

Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:

First to you senator in Milwaukee and I want to get this from both of you. What was your overall reaction Senator Kapenga when you saw the audit?

Chris Kapenga:

We had some preliminary indications just in our interviews and discussions with DOT and some people kind of engaged in DOT projects that there was going to be some issues coming out. We had seen this for a couple years where when we asked questions about certain things and why this project was being done or what about these dollar amounts, the answers weren’t adding up. So it wasn’t a complete shock, but I think what was interesting is for the first time, we have a secretary who just got put in place, who actually was kind of an open book, which was encouraging for me to see on the depth of the problems. And remember, as Senator Vinehout knows, this was a limited scope audit so it was not digging into everything and we found massive problems.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senator Vinehout, what about your reaction?

Kathleen Vinehout:

Well the audit is very detailed and there are a lot of very specific recommendations that the audit has on what both the legislature can do and what DOT can do. I was very pleased that the audit, bipartisan audit members were focused on solutions. They wanted DOT to come back right away. They wanted to have progress reports. They wanted to see data every six months. We, as an audit committee, bipartisan audit committee, unanimously introduced a bill to put some accountability into the statutes that should have been there 20 years ago.

Frederica Freyberg:

This didn’t come as a grand surprise to either one of you. Senator Kapenga, how bad is this?

Chris Kapenga:

It’s bad enough to where not only do we know that there’s an issue with estimating the costs. We know that there is an issue with the priority of the projects that are put in place. So now, it’s not just, well, is the dollar amount that we’re giving the DOT appropriate? When we see that there’s projects that are slated in that should not even be slated in and when we ask questions about why did you do the projects you did, when we don’t have answers to that and they can’t give us a rhyme or reason, that’s concerning.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to stay with you Senator Kapenga, who is to blame?

Chris Kapenga:

You can point fingers but at the end of the day, the DOT secretary is the one who’s responsible for his department. So Mark Gottlieb who was in that position, did leave that position recently. And we were a little bit concerned with some performance things we had seen there. Right now what we’re focused on, as Senator Vinehout pointed out, is we now have to fix what we see. So pointing fingers doesn’t do a lot of good at this point. We just realize there’s a major process revamp that has to take place. And we’ll see that coming.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senator Vinehout, what role do delays in projects play in these cost overruns?

Frederica Freyberg:

That’s a big question right now. One of the objectives is to try and balance that transportation budget to balance it, if we cut back on projects, there are delays. If there are delays, there are cost overruns. So every solution has to be considered for the unintended consequences. That’s one of the problems.

Frederica Freyberg:

And staying with you Senator Vinehout, the audit talked about the conditions of the highways in Wisconsin decreasing, you know, they’re not as good as they were and they’re getting worse, and furthermore they don’t compare favorably to surrounding Midwestern states. What are the concerns about that for Wisconsin's economy?

Kathleen Vinehout:

Well, it’s a huge concern. We have bridges in my own county that have been condemned and we still have schoolchildren that are crossing those condemned bridges in the middle of the winter to get to the school bus. There was a bridge that just collapsed just this week in Buffalo County. And I fear that there’s more to come. The floods that we had last summer have weakened a lot of the bridges. There are businesses that can’t operate that are talking to me about closing, because they can’t get the tourist buses across the bridge that has been out since last July. This affects our economy. It affects people. It affects vehicles that are damaged by poor roads and poor bridges and it puts people in danger.

Frederica Freyberg:

Senator Kapenga do you think that’s overstating the condition of the roads?

Chris Kapenga:

No, there’s actually a map that DOT showed us in the audit hearing that we were in. It was a color-coded map and it showed very clearly the areas of the state where the road conditions were poor. This is when we started asking questions. They brought up a situation where there was a $500 million project that was approved and that project was only 20 years into its 50-year life. And when they said why are we doing this and not spending the money outstate where we have problems, as the senator brought up, there was no response to that. They didn’t have an answer. That’s what we’re so concerned about.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, Senator Kapenga, you have suggested the time is not now to start talking about increasing funds to fill the transportation shortfall, or you know, start on any new projects until this gets straightened out. Where does that leave you in terms of the people who want to look for a sustainable source of funding for transportation?

Chris Kapenga:

The first thing you have to look at is when you do budgeting and I’ve done budgeting in my previous life as a CPA. It’s something that I’ve done a lot of. You have to have good underlying assumptions when you budget. The problem that the DOT highlights is you can’t even make good assumptions when you’re trying to project. For instance, what is the right dollar amount? You don’t know because you can’t tell what projects are appropriate and what are not. So what I’ve said is the governor in his proposed budget has a good solution where we bond at a very reduced level for the next two years, and that allows Secretary Ross to get his arms around this problem and come to us to fix it.

Frederica Freyberg:

And Senator Vinehout, where do you stand on increasing the gas tax or something like that, at this juncture?

Kathleen Vinehout:

We need to find efficiencies. We need to reduce spending but we also need to raise revenue. And it’s very clear, looking at how much money has been transferred from other programs, like schools and the UW, into the transportation fund. The fund itself is not sustainable. And these efficiencies, we need to capture every single one of them, but we cannot sustain this spending at this level. We cannot sustain $1 of every five going into paying off debt. We have to fix it.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right, we leave it there. Senator Vinehout in Madison and Senator Kapenga in Milwaukee, thank you very much.

Kathleen Vinehout, Chris Kapenga:

Thank you.