DALLAS — Louisiana’s top highway official told lawmakers on Wednesday that soon there will be no money available for new highway projects unless additional funding sources are provided.
William D. Ankner, director of the Department of Transportation and Development, told a joint meeting of four legislative committees that after fiscal 2010 declining state gasoline tax revenue will not provide enough money to build new highways or bridges.
Ankner said the purchasing power of Louisiana’s gasoline and fuels tax of 16 cents per gallon, which has not been increased since 1984, has had its purchasing power whittled down by inflation to a levy equivalent to 7.4 cents per gallon. A four-cent per gallon fuels tax, which was constitutionally dedicated in 1990 to 16 specific transportation projects, is now providing the equivalent of 1.6 cents per gallon, he said.
“At the end of this fiscal year, our capital improvement program will be geared almost exclusively to system protection and safety, with no new capacity,” Ankner said. “We’ll invest in our existing system, trying to protect the gains of the past few years.”
State highway officials and representatives from several transportation interest groups testified on the need for additional funding sources for transportation Wednesday at a joint session of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Committee, and both Transportation committees.
The joint hearing was prompted by House Concurrent Resolution 153 that calls for the four committees to meet jointly to study the transportation funding situation, and deliver a report to the Legislature by January.
Rep. Hollis Downs, R-Ruston, who sponsored the resolution and chaired Wednesday’s meeting, said the joint committee has two main responsibilities.
“First, we must take that 16-cent tax and figure out how we can make sure it does not lose any more of its purchasing power,” he said. “Then we need to find a way to pay for $14 billion of highway projects, which have already been identified, over the next 20 years.
“If we don’t, we might as well lock the doors and throw away the keys, because by next year we won’t even be able to keep up with our maintenance needs,” Downs said. “We can forget about adding any new miles.”
He said the state has made progress on its transportation network over the last 10 years, with help from the $3.3 billion of fuel-tax revenue bonds sold for the Transportation Infrastructure Model for Economic Development program and allocations from sizeable state surpluses.
“The bonds have all been sold, and the surpluses are gone for the foreseeable future,” he said. “The TIMED program has two projects remaining, and we don’t know how we’re going to pay for them.”
Michael Bridges, undersecretary for management and finance at DOTD, said each penny of the gasoline tax brings in approximately $30 million a year, or a total of about $600 million a year.
If the gasoline tax had been indexed for inflation since 1990, Bridges said, it would bring in approximately $900 million a year.
