AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine transportation officials acknowledge there's a shortfall in the funding available to maintain the state's road and bridge network. State Transportation Commissioner David Bernhardt can even put a number on it.
"We're probably short around $119 million, per year, to meet the goals we would like to meet," he says.
The reasons for the shortfall are no mystery: For starters, revenue from per-gallon gasoline taxes have tailed off as vehicles become more fuel efficient. Also, the expense of maintaining the road network is increasing due to inflation, and the fact that interstate highways, constructed in the '50s '60s and '70s, have aged to the point where they'll need major work.
Gov. Paul LePage has said Congress should increase the federal gas tax. Bernhardt also says the administration is working on a "smart bonding" package that would lay out a ten-year plan for borrowing that will help catch up on road and bridge maintenance.
"What we're looking for is to get Priority 1, 2, and 3 roads — which is the bulk of the vehicle miles traveled in the state, around 70 percent of the vehicle miles traveled — up to a a certain customer service level, by a certain year," he says. "So that kind of sets our goal, and it is set in statute, and that's what we're trying to hit."
Bernhardt says although Maine will need help from the federal government, the state can help close the funding gap.
"Because we do have low debt-to-revenue ratios, we've been fairly conservative, so there's some room with bonding," he says. "But look at it in a long-term; don't just say, 'Hey, let's bond this year.' Let's look at, 'OK, how can we fill some of this hole with some really smart bonding out, like, 10 years.'"
Maine Better Transportation Association Executive Director Maria Fuentes says most of the blame for that shortfall falls on Congress. But she says Maine hasn't helped itself.
"We got rid of fuel tax indexing and I know that ... some very vocal people hated it," Fuentes says. "But that was a step in the wrong direction."
Fuentes says Maine, like other states, has been trying to find ways to step up infrastructure funding. She says after the Minneapolis bridge collapse, for instance, that state's Legislature created a $160 million program to fix some of the state's most deteriorated bridges, but even that hasn't been enough.
"They're realizing that the federal government is really shirking its responsibility in terms of its commitment to the infrastructure that it helped build," Fuentes says.
A spokesman for AAA of Northern New England, Pat Moody, says he also would like to see the federal gas tax increased. Moody says rutted and pot-holed roads are costing drivers $300-500 a year in extra repairs.
Moody says Washington needs to take a further step to ensure adequate funding for the long-term, by indexing for inflation.
"The gas tax hasn't kept pace with inflation," he says. "It costs a heck of a lot of money for materials now compared with what it did 20 years ago when the gas tax was last raised at the federal level."
