The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee voted 18-1 on Friday to move $134 million in GARVEE bonds one step closer to reality. While the bulk of that money is being earmarked for projects in southern Idaho, two of our local lawmakers were still supportive of the bill. Read why they are supporting it here.
Is it better for our local delegation to lend support to to this in order to gain support for another $90 million for Highway 95 next year?
2 comments:
What are they thinking with this GARVEE program??? Idaho's using tomorrow's money to pay for stuff today. Tomorrow will come and there won't be any money...or we'll have to borrow again! Our legislature is like a teenager with a credit card - no sense of future consequences. Just 'cause their peers(other states) have resorted to this doesn't make it right or good. Someone needs to tell those kids to "just say no". We need to get serious about finding some other way to pay for roads. And we've gotta quit building new ones until we can pay to keep up the ones we've got. Please, let's not be lemmings headed blindly over the cliff with the rest of the idiots.
Thanks for the comment Riverdog. You sum up the opposition's side of the argument very well. This is a complex issue, and certainly GARVEE has its risk factors, but many of these Highway projects that are funded with GARVEE bonds wouldn't get built for many years.
Proponents say that GARVEE bonding will not only help expedite the projects but they also say that building them now actually saves money by avoiding the escalating cost of construction materials.
BTW, I agree that our region needs to get serious about finding sustainable transportation funding sources. I hope the legislature is able to pull something off this session.
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