Remember Referendum D, anyone?

The Republican caucus argued long and loud that the bipartisan budget reform bill SB 228 would amount to “highway robbery.” The repeal of the Arveschoug-Bird provision would eliminate the 6 percent limit on growth in the state General Fund that funds health care programs, job training, mental health services, prisons and hundreds of safety net programs for residents (not to mention thousands of public and private sector jobs).

Any money left over in the General Fund gets automatically transferred to transportation and capital projects, but that hasn’t happened for years in the recession-wracked state budget further pinched by TABOR.

Considering the economic times and the fast-growing rolls for unemployment, food assistance and poverty prevention programs, does it really make sense to choose pavement over people?

Senate Majority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, made his yearning for asphalt known with his caucus offering dozens of amendments to stymie the bill. Many of those proposed revisions would halt the implementation of the budget reform process until funding-starved transportation and capital improvement projects were completed in GOP districts.

Why is there no cash to pave roads and expand rural community colleges?

One reason is the failure of Referendum D, the $1.5 billion bond initiative for transportation, K-12 and higher education capital construction projects and police/firefighter pensions, which lost by a scant 14,000 votes in 2005. Then-Rep. Penry opposed the initiative and actively campaigned against it.

More recently, the entire Republican caucus voted against SB 108, the transportation funding bill known as FASTER, expected to raise $250 million per year. Cooler heads prevailed and the governor signed the bill Monday but not for the continuing obstruction of Minority Leader Penry and crew who should be dubbed “Hoover Man” and “No Boy.”

(Photo/Pablo Photo, Flickr)

Gibbs’ bill (SB 108), with the catchy acronym FASTER (Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery), would raise registration fees by $41 a year for a vehicle weighing between 2,000 pounds and 5,000 pounds, which would affect more than 4 million cars and trucks in Colorado.

That would generate more than $250 million a year to fix the Colorado’s crumbling roads and bridges, but state officials say around $500 million a year is needed just to repair and maintain the current system.

Because of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), the state Legislature is only able to address the shortfall through fee increases. Any efforts to increase gas, sales or income taxes to find a permanent funding source have to go to a public vote — an unlikely scenario in the current economic climate.

Gibbs portrayed FASTER as a small first step until there’s more of an appetite for a transportation tax-increase ballot question. And he added that federal stimulus dollars aren’t the long-term solution either.

“The latest numbers I’ve heard so far reflect that Colorado could bring in about $522 million for transportation [from the stimulus bill], which would be great, but it’s just like winning the lottery. It’s one-time money and it’s not sustainable in any way,” Gibbs said.

“That’s why I’m working on this FASTER bill, because that’s actually sustainable, it’s responsible and it’s not mortgaging our kids’ future more or less.”

Republicans have hammered on FASTER because they say it’s a fee increase during a bad economy, an end-around TABOR and unpalatable because it keeps tolling on existing roads on the table as another possible funding source.

Not a single Republican in the Senate voted for the bill when it passed 19-16 last week, and another brutal partisan battle is expected in the House. Rep. Christine Scanlan (D-Silverthorne), who joined Gibbs for a town hall meeting in Vail over the weekend, joked that tolling was put back into the bill — after initially being taken out during Senate debate last week — so the House would have something to take out again.

Gibbs, who along with Scanlan fought two bills last year that would have imposed tolls on Interstate 70, said the difference with FASTER is that tolling would be left up to local governments.

“This allows local communities to decide what they want to do in their area, and there has to be local consensus within an area that would be impacted,” Gibbs said. “If Vail wanted to toll an area within their region and [the nearby town of] Avon didn’t, there would never be tolling. It puts together a cooperative type of agreement.”

According to Gibbs, the state gas tax, which is 22 cents a gallon and hasn’t increased since 1991, simply does not keep pace with the demands of increased traffic and heavier vehicles. Scanlan added a transportation tax increase of some sort on the ballot is inevitable, but she doubts it will happen this year.

“There’s more talk in the House about doing [a ballot question],” Scanlan said. “It’s just that it’s a tough climate to do that in and there’s no money to fund the campaign that it would take to do it. Eventually that has to happen. We will have to go to the people and make the argument around what those dollars are needed for.”

Scanlan added the gas tax (the federal tax of 18.4 cents a gallon has not gone up since 1992) is clearly an outmoded method of funding road repairs and maintenance.

“As cars are getting more and more fuel efficient, you get more and more hybrids on the road, you get electric cars coming onto the road, the impact to the road remains the same — those vehicles are still taking a toll on the road — but the gas tax that supports the maintenance and upkeep is having less and less of an impact,” Scanlan said.

Gibbs expects his bill to change even more in the House, where Republicans continue to put forth other funding alternatives, but he said it’s imperative the Legislature take action on roads immediately because of the deteriorating condition of roads and bridges and the potential for FASTER to create 10,000 jobs.

“The bill will dramatically change when it heads over to the House, so the numbers will change, but I’m really hoping to get this through,” Gibbs said.

(Photo/jeco, Flickr)

Lawmakers, after initially singing Kumbaya on a transportation funding bill that would raise vehicle registration fees to pay for road and bridge repairs, went their partisan ways late Wednesday when the possibility of tolling on existing roads was reintroduced.

That prompted a Democrat-led state Senate vote of approval by a 19-16 mostly party-line margin late Wednesday, and a mass exodus by Republicans.

Earlier in the day, FASTER (Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery) looked like it would have at least some GOP support when a controversial Vehicle Mile Traveled (VMT) pilot program was dropped.

But Senate Bill 108’s sponsor, Sen. Dan Gibbs (D-Silverthorne), who last year led a protest on the Capitol steps against tolling on I-70, opted to put the possibility of tolling approved by local jurisdictions back into the bill.

“We feel like they’ve made a strategic decision to power this through,” Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry said in a Denver Post story late Wednesday. “In the end, this bill is substantially the same as when it was introduced.”

Gibbs told the Post it was time to get something done on transportation: “You get to a point where you have to move forward. We’re not waiting for the 11th hour.”

Now FASTER, which would raise registration fees $32 per vehicle this year (raising a little over $200 million) and $41 per vehicle in subsequent years -– raising around $250 million a year to fix deficient roads and bridges -– moves on to the House. The issue of tolling could be hotly debated there as well.

Rep. Christine Scanlan (D-Dillon) told the Colorado Independent on Tuesday that she has a problem with the concept.

“With the tolling, the local community would have the power of whether or not it would be something they’d be interested in pursuing,” Scanlan said. “As a rule, I don’t like tolling. It hurts our economy more than it helps any of our transportation needs.”

Gov. Bill Ritter met with House leadership Wednesday to help pave the way for SB 108, which he strongly supports.

“It will let us fix and maintain structurally deficient bridges and unsafe roadways, and it will put us on a long-term path toward a modern, 21st century transportation system that is supported by a sustainable funding stream,” Ritter said in a release late Wednesday.

Democrats, including Senate sponsor Dan Gibbs (D-Silverthorne), agreed to axe tolling on existing roads if local governments agree, and also dropped a controversial pilot program to charge drivers based on Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), which would have required GPS tracking.

Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry (R-Grand Junction), who Tuesday promised a battle royal over SB 108, told the Rocky Mountain News that progress was made but that proposed vehicle registration fees at the heart of the bill still need to come down and that some money needs to come from the general budget to pay for badly needed road and bridge repairs.

Sen. Al White (R-Hayden) proposed cutting the $32 fee hike in the first year in half and then letting it go up to $41 each of the next three years after that. A plan to allow the fee hike to go up in line with inflation also was axed.

White told the Colorado Independent he expects the spirit of compromise to continue and that the bill will eventually be passed in some form or another. At the $41 level, SB 108, which also includes a $2 per-vehicle rental car fee hike, would raise more than $250 million a year.

(Photo/Thiophene Guy, Flickr)

The bill’s main impact would be to boost vehicle registration fees $32 annually, raising a little over $200 million in its first year to fund transportation infrastructure repairs, including the state’s 126 structurally deficient bridges. It’s cruising through the statehouse under the catchy slogan-title Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery or FASTER.

In subsequent years the fee increase would go up to $41 per vehicle, raising about $250 million a year. But since state officials say they need $500 million a year just to repair and maintain the current system of roads and bridges, the bill proposes other possibilities for closing that funding gap.

The most controversial of these is a voluntary pilot program called Vehicle Miles Transferred or VMT, which would study an Oregon system in which drivers pay fees based on how many miles they drive rather than paying a tax on every gallon of gasoline they buy.

VMT uses a GPS system to track the miles each participant drives, but some rural lawmakers say that would be unfair in areas where towns are much farther apart.

“Obviously folks in rural areas who travel long distances — and that’s most of my district — probably would not be really interested in that,” said Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon.

Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, whose district encompasses most of northwestern Colorado, agreed that the wide-open spaces of the Western Slope make VMT a nonstarter for his constituents, but he added there’s also something somewhat sinister about it.

“There is a concern about Big Brother knowing what the heck I’m up to, and that’s just a natural reaction to government looking over our shoulders –- particularly in the western part of the country,” White said. “We tend to be a little more independent and like a lot less oversight than maybe others in other parts of the country.”

Also still on the table is the possibility of tolls being imposed on existing roads. That’s something most Western Slope lawmakers, including Gibbs, strongly objected to last year.

“With the tolling, the local community would have the power of whether or not it would be something they’d be interested in pursuing,” Scanlan said. “As a rule, I don’t like tolling. It hurts our economy more than it helps any of our transportation needs.”

FASTER, sponsored by Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, made it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee on a 6-4 party-line vote Tuesday. Democrats steadfastly argued higher fees are the only way to raise money to fix the state’s crumbling highways and bridges, but some say now is not the time to hit Colorado residents with more fees. The full Senate will now debate the bill.

The previous state Legislature was roundly criticized for failing to come up with a transportation bill last session, making SB 108 a critical test for lawmakers this time around.

White said he expects the full Senate to drive a hard bargain on the bill but ultimately reach some compromises.

“We will pass a transportation bill. I don’t sense that either caucus is inextricably deadlocked and unable to reach consensus,” White said. “We’ll get to consensus on a bill that we can get passed and will provide some relatively quick relief for transportation funding.”

White, who sits on the Joint Budget Committee (JBC), said he expects the vehicle registration fee will come down some, and that the bill will ultimately wind up raising somewhere between $125 million and $200 million a year.

But at some point he said it will be up to voters to find more money for the rest of the repairs and maintenance that gas taxes simply aren’t covering. This bill, he said, will likely just be a stopgap measure until the economy improves and voters are more willing to tax themselves.

“So ultimately to solve the problem we’re going to have to have the buy-in of the citizens who either do or don’t recognize the need for additional transportation funding and who either are or are not willing to fund it,” White said.

The state’s TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) law necessitates any sales or income tax increase going to a public vote, meaning fee increases are really the only tool available to lawmakers.

UPDATE: Senate Republicans and Democrats smoked a peace pipe Wednesday in their heated debate over a transportation funding bill called FASTER (Funding Advancement for Surface Transportation and Economic Recovery). See: Lawmakers reach compromise on transportation funding bill