Transportation panelists brief Senate committee

But lawmakers have few queries about proposals

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The heads of Gov. Bill Ritter's panel that recommends spending $1.5 billion more a year on transportation faced few questions Tuesday from a Senate committee that has yet to entertain any legislation to raise the money.

Colorado Transportation Commission Chairman Doug Aden, Greeley business owner Bob Tointon and State Treasurer Cary Kennedy gave the Senate Transportation Committee a briefing on the panel's final report.

The panel recommended raising various taxes and fees to generate $1.5 billion more a year for state and local transportation needs.

But Ritter and others have focused on the panel's threshold $500 million amount it says is needed to clear up current maintenance backlogs - what it calls a "Fix It Now" program.

That amount could be raised if the legislature chose to increase auto registration fees an average of $100 per vehicle.

But so far, no lawmaker has introduced any such bill.

Kennedy noted the legislature used to approve periodic increases in the state gasoline tax rate to keep up with inflation. It was last increased to 22 cents a gallon in 1991.

A year later, the adoption of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights meant any other increases had to go to a vote of the people.

In reply, Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, pointed out that "the entire state budget continued to grow faster" after TABOR and that lawmakers could have allocated more of that money to transportation.

But highway funding has traditionally been raised through a user-fee system including gasoline tax, registration and license fees, Kennedy responded.

Still, the legislature in 1997 adopted a routine general fund transfer to state highways, but tax cuts that followed and the recession that occurred later resulted in those highway funds evaporating.

The passage of Referendum C has restored that transfer to roads.