DALLAS — Elected leaders and highway officials in a growing number of states are making plans to bring their pleas for more transportation funding to lawmakers when legislatures convene in 2017.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he hopes to avoid asking for a gasoline tax increase next year. Louisiana's transportation secretary is warning that a gasoline tax increase of 100% may be needed to help resolve a $13 billion project backlog. And Indiana legislators see a higher gasoline tax or more toll roads ahead.
Haslam said Monday he has been meeting with lawmakers and highway officials on a revenue package needed to help pare down a $6 billion backlog of highway and bridge projects that have been approved but not funded.
"I don't think we can get away from the fact that we have to do something at some point," he said. "It's time to bring the legislature into that. We can't get anything done unless they agree."
Haslam said a gasoline tax increase may be sought from the 2017 legislature, but he hopes it can be avoided.
"Whether you live in downtown Nashville or you live in Pulaski, we have to have a plan that works for all of those," he said. "The challenging piece of that is obviously how are you going to pay for it."
The governor toured the state in late 2015 to drum up support for a gasoline tax increase, but shortly afterward ruled out a tax hike until 2017.
"What we've been doing so far is saying what are the needs, what will that cost us, and let's figure out different ways that we might pay for that," Haslam said Monday. "It's time to begin having those conversations again with legislators."
The state's gasoline tax of 21.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 17 cents per gallon of diesel have not been raised since 1989. Each penny of fuel tax brings in $31 million per year, according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation.
State Sen. Randy McNally, a Republican who will become lieutenant governor when the 2017 session begins, said he wants more details about President-elect Donald Trump's $1 trillion infrastructure proposal before deciding on a state transportation funding plan.
"They have indicated that they'll do a lot in the area of infrastructure," he said of the Trump plan.
Louisiana motorists may be stunned when they learn how much of an increase in the gasoline tax is needed to generate the additional $700 million per year needed to improve roads and bridges, according to Shawn Wilson, secretary of the state Department of Transportation and Development.
"We are not going to be shy about making a case for what needs to be done in Louisiana," Wilson said. "You are going to get sticker shock because we have ignored the truth for too long."
A doubling of Louisiana's current gasoline tax of 20 cents per gallon would bring in an additional $600 million per year, he said.
Louisiana has a $13 billion backlog of transportation needs and a $16 billion list of large unfunded projects, including a new bridge across the Mississippi River near Baton Rouge.
A panel studying the state's transportation revenue needs will present a report to Gov. John Bel Edwards by Jan. 1.
Tax increases in Indiana will probably be part of the road-funding legislation that lawmakers will consider in January, said state Senate President David Long, a Republican from Fort Wayne.
"It's inevitable we have to find some new sources of money," Long said Monday at a legislative preview event.
"People are quite reticent, understandably so, to say what resource we have to raise," he said. "Is it fees, is it tolls, is it gas tax? It's hard to say."
