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Page 2 · column 1 of 3 · from the scan, no model involved
WHAT WE MEAN is the practice of having all road-generated tax revenues earmarked only for road projects. The net effect of this is to present highway departments at every level with more money than they really need, so they go out and dream up projects so they can spend it all.
We can hear the howls of some highwaymen even as this thought is put to paper, but all the poor-mouthing they can come up with won’t convince us that this isn’t the case — not with all the un-needed “improvement” projects we could catalog in this immediate vicinity of Piedmont Virginia. Why else must every grade be reduced, every winding country road straightened out, or every bridge replaced?
Because of “safety”? You can believe that if you want to; from where we sit, it looks like spending to meet the level of income.
BfJT WE’RE APPARENTLY stuck with this situation, at least until the entire landscape is paved over. More pressing public projects which ought to receive priority over busy-work on the roads will just have to wait — the nation’s needs for hospitals, schools, child care centers, parks, recreational opportunities, medical research, environmental protection, waste disposal, and on and on^and on.
No, we’ll just have to keep on using all gasoline taxes to provide for more ways to generate more gasoline taxes. □
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