PORTLAND, Maine - Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is chairing a Senate hearing today on how the country should deal with its deteriorated infrastructure.
Joining her at the Washington hearing is Maine Transportation Commissioner David Bernhardt, who's heading a national association of transportation officials.
Bernhardt spoke of the importance assured federal funding.
"At Maine DOT, we produce a 3-year work plan containing all the work we plan to do over that time period. Having stability in federal funding makes this work much more of a reality than a guessing game," Bernhardt said.
A lot of this morning's testimony was focused on money and the need for more of it. Collins, talking with U.S. Chamber of Commerce official Edward Mortimer, noted that several states have raised their gas tax, something Washington hasn't done in decades.
"To what do you attribute the reluctance at the federal level to even consider indexing the gas tax?" Collins asked Mortimer.
"Look, it comes down to political courage," Mortimer said. "If you go and look at a lot of the states you just mentioned, the business community was there, with organized labor helping, and none of those people I'm aware of have lost their seat because they supported increasing revenue to pay for infrastructure. I know some members here signed a pledge saying they didn't want to raise revenue for anything. I think our belief is everyone needs to come into Congress as elected officials with an open mind. and we need to look at this. There has to be a component of revenue."
Mortimer said the only viable way to do that currently is to rely on the gasoline tax.
Maine DOT chief Bernhardt said Maine is reacting to the funding crunch by trying to become more efficient and effective, by innovating, and by stretching dollars as far as possible.
"There's only so much we can do to become efficient and effective with the resources we have," Bernhardt said. "At some point in time there will be a breaking point and something will fail."
Todd Hauptli, speaking for the nation's airports, suggested that Congress lift a cap on the "passenger facility charge," a tax on airplane tickets that helps fund improvements at the nation's airports.
