Here & Now

Hintz Responds To GOP Transportation Plan

Frederica Freyberg:

The transportation budget plan faces opposition from Democrats at the state capitol. A Democratic member of the Joint Finance Committee joins us now from Oshkosh. Representative Gordon Hintz. Thank you for being here.

Gordon Hintz:

Happy to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your reaction to Representative Kooyenga’s plan for transportation funding?

Gordon Hintz:

For the past six years the challenge on transportation funding has been pretty clear. Revenue has not kept up with inflation and project demand out there and the legislature needs to address this. There’s been studies. There’s been recommendations. It’s all pretty much known. What was a pretty clear-cut simple challenge has been met with incredibly complex plan that increases the gas tax effectively 23% but it’s the part that goes well beyond that. It seems like the biggest objective of this is to reduce the income taxes of some of the wealthiest earners in Wisconsin along with a lot of other things that have nothing to do addressing transportation.

Frederica Freyberg:

How will that be met on the Joint Finance Committee when it’s this really giant package that as you say includes not just uppers and downers on sales tax on gas and the gas tax but then this whole idea of introducing a flat tax? How will that be met?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, I can tell you it’s been met by the Democrats on the committee as a non-starter. We’ve been looking for an opportunity to try to work with Republicans on this. Two years ago in the budget we proposed at least re-instating indexing to make sure the problem wouldn’t get any worse and that funding would keep up with inflation. But this goes so far beyond the any of the recommendations to address transportation. And this idea you can significantly reduce the taxes again, a 50% tax cut for the wealthiest earners in Wisconsin as some sort of offset for a 23% sales tax increase–er, gas tax increase doesn’t make any sense. And it just shows you that budget after budget the biggest priority, bigger than K-12 education, bigger than the UW System has been these expansive tax cuts for the wealthy and this is just another example of that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Specific to his transportation financing plans though, are there some parts of that Democrats could support?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, I think if you were to just look at the transportation proposal and separate the other things I think there are some elements worth looking at. I think they give local government some options with a sales tax a lot of the counties have been asking for as their roads have increasingly declined. As state revenue support for those communities hasn’t been there. But it’s hard to get around the fact that their plan, their transportation plan, was called “The Road to A Flat Tax.” In other words, it seems to be more important for them to erode future money for public schools and UW System than it is to fund our transportation shortfalls. It should be broken up and separated. And we can evaluate those things but it’s a 23% increase in the gas tax and that’s a lot of. It’s a lot of the people who have the oldest, least fuel efficient cars are some of the lowest income earners in the state so the sales tax is regressive and unpredictable. But it is a starting point.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you make of — so you talk about the increase in the sales tax on gasoline but he counters that with eliminating 4 to 5 cents in the gas tax. Would you like it better if the sales tax went up as well as the gas tax?

Gordon Hintz:

Well, I mean again, the net in the analysis by the Fiscal Bureau said it would ultimately lead to a 7.2 cent gas tax increase for $2.40 a gallon. That’s all the public is going to talk about. We can talk about upper, lower, moving things around but at the end of the day that’s what we’re talking about. I think the real thing that stood out to me was even with this increase in revenue there’s no new money for any of the road projects. And a lot of that is because they attempt to restore all the misguided policies from the last few years trying to reduce the amount of record borrowing they’ve done to try to replenish the money they’ve money from the general fund to pay for roads. There’s certainly cleaner, easier ways to do it. And the problem with the sales tax is when gas is more expensive you’re going to pay more with the sales tax. Whereas if you just increased the gas tax, it would stay standard on a per gallon basis.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Gordon Hintz, thanks very much.

Gordon Hintz:

Thank you.