By Ghost of John Brown
Wednesday, an Illinois Appellate Court struck down the 2009 Capital Bill based on constitutional grounds. Much has been written about the legal aspects of the case, so I don't need to expound on that. Additionally, much has been written about the amount of taxes that were included in the bill, so I don't need to go there either. What I would like to discuss is what we really need and where the bill went wrong from a policy perspective, not a legal perspective.
We need a capital bill. We can debate the size of the bill and how it was funded, but taking care of transportation and public works issues shouldn't be one of them. The State of Illinois has approximately 26,000 bridges, of which 17% of them are rated to be structurally or functionally obsolete. That's over 4,400 bridges. Chances are, you've driven over one of them.
Our water and wastewater systems aren't much better. A significant portion of the water and wastewater systems in this country were built in the 1950 through the expansion of home ownership after the return of our soldiers after World War II. We have pipes that are severely calcified and clogged by sediments and others that have reached their expected lifespan. It is estimated that we lose approximately 1.7 trillion gallons of water annually through faulty infrastructure. It is not uncommon to hear news reports of a water main break and a subsequent boil order being put into place. Sometimes these problems have deadly results. Sewer pipes built before the 1990's were primarily constructed with vitrified clay pipes, which crack easily, fill up with tree roots and then cause backups into homes. These problems will only get worse as these systems get closer to their obsolesces. The trouble with water and sewer lines is that literally, they are out of sight, and therefore we don't worry about them.
I could go on about the condition of our nation's dams and levees. Many dams have silted in so severely that they are no longer useful. The levee breaks of New Orleans a few years ago are evidence of their problems.
Add to that mix our public buildings. Schools, universities, libraries, fire and police buildings, etc., etc., etc. all need occasional refurbishment and/or reconstruction.
While this may not be a well received comment, a lot of our infrastructure problems are the result of neglect. We have underfunded the adequate maintenance of our systems for years and now they are starting to crumble.
Taking care of our infrastructure is a "meat and potatoes" issue. The trouble is, that our politicians know that, and they have taken advantage of our trust. In both the "Illinois First" and the 2009 Capital Bill, which was just overturned, what were touted as "Capital Bills" were only partially related to Capital projects. Instead of working to fix our infrastructure, we bought furniture, gave money to churches, not for profit groups, museums, etc., etc., etc. I remember when Illinois First was passed, a friend in government who had gone to Springfield that day said, "you could smell the pork all the way back I-55."
Here are some thoughts about how to effectively construct an effective Capital Bill:
Stick to what we need: Clear out all of the projects that don't have anything to do with infrastructure. If the elections of 2010 proved anything, it proved that the public has lost confidence in our leaders to effectively deal with the pressing needs. Basic infrastructure is a pressing need. Stick to that. Pass a clean Capital Bill, clear out the pork and then execute it effectively and you will start to regain the public's trust. The Federal "Stimulus" bill was touted with "shovel ready projects", but only a very small fraction of the bill was related to public works and the voters were upset at the results.
No more yo-yo's in funding: It is fun for a politician to show up at a ribbon cutting. That coupled with a 2-year or 4-year stint as an elected official leads to funding bills that are huge for 2-3 years and then minuscule for the next 2-3 years. It leads back to the law of supply and demand: initiate a big jolt in the number of projects that we ask contractors to build and the price will go up. When funding dries up, thousands get laid off and just collect unemployment. We need level funding instead of yo-yo's. One piece of construction equipment will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or as much as millions. If we want to create long term jobs, let the construction industry know that funding will be stable.
An example of this was the period at the end of the Illinois First Bill and before the beginning of the Illinois Tollway's Congestion Relief Project. In the waning years of Illinois First, transportation funding had slid to a fraction of what it was in the initial years. In that year, about half of the largest construction firms in the Chicago area went out of business. After they went out of business, the Illinois Tollway started the Congestion Relief Program at approximately the same time that the O'Hare Modernization Program took off. The trouble was that with so many of the large construction firms going out of business, we didn't have the capacity to handle the new programs. The bids for the first few projects came in significantly higher than the estimates because no one anticipated the reduction in construction capacity. A steady funding program would have greatly diminished that problem.
The dirty little secret of public works funding is that this is largely anticipated. If funding goes in a yo-yo cycle, when there is little work, the politicians know that the contractors, industry groups, consultants, etc. will line up to give them political contributions. If we just had a stable funding source for public works, the politicians wouldn't be needed - oooops.
Plan Longterm: Because funding is so sporadic, we tend to put band-aids on the problems instead of actually fixing them. We have roadways that have not been fully reconstructed for 60 years. When a roadway gets that old, instead of resurfacing the road every 15 years, we have to resurface it every 8 years, which is costly and wasteful. We can build roads with concrete instead of asphalt. The initial cost will be higher, but the long term cost will be less as just one example.
Streamline the Process: Unfortunately, most of this would have to be done at the Federal level. Most large scale projects take a decade or more to go from inception to completion, largely due to environmental rules that are made more complicated by endless lawsuits. For instance, when the southerly extension of I-355 was ready to go to construction, the Environmental Law and Policy Center filed lawsuit based on the Environmental Impact Statement. After years in court and millions spent in additional studies, there was not a substantial change in the project except for the added cost related to those additional studies and legal fees.
While the most recent capital bill had significant problems, funding capital projects is a needed and vital role for our State government. We need to fix the problems with the bill and provide for maintaining our existing infrastructure.
