To the Editor:
I want to thank Ellen Dickens for her letter highlighting my vote against the gigantic bond package of 2009. I’m proud of it – it’s not easy voting against hordes of lobbyists and special interests all demanding more taxpayer money. (“Jon McKane voting record,” Page 4)
Had the borrowing package been solely for Maine’s highways and bridges, it might have been easier to go along with it, much as I disagree with using borrowed money for basic needs.
Only about a third of the $150 million package – one of the largest in Maine’s history – went to roads and bridges. The lion’s share of the borrowed money was going to be invested in other needs, including the Department of Health and Human Services, Dept. of Conservation, Dept. of Community and Economic Development, Maine Technology Inst., the Historic Preservation Commission, the Brunswick Naval Air Station Redevelopment, the Finance Authority of Maine, the Economic Recovery Loan Program and the Small Enterprise Growth Board.
In good economic times, borrowing for all these worthy causes might make a little more sense, but with the state facing a half billion dollar structural budget gap (that has now grown to $1 billion), with the economy grinding slower, unemployment rising, and with families and small businesses struggling to stay afloat, now was not the time to increase our already staggering debt load – a debt that will ultimately be paid by taxes on businesses, families and individuals.
Maine’s overall debt picture is very sobering. If you add up all the debt categories – moral obligation bonds, debt to our state’s hospitals, and the unfunded liabilities for retiree pensions and health insurance – we’re looking at a total state debt of nearly $14 billion. That’s about $28,000 for every Maine household. One has to ask – when is there too much debt?
Back to the roads – they are indeed in shameful and dangerous condition. Yet every year Maine’s highways and bridges are given nonessential status and never given the attention they deserve in favor of other budget priorities. Our transportation budget has shrunk from 25 percent of total state revenues in 1975 to less than 10 percent today.
Bonding for highway maintenance enables politicians to continue to underfund our transportation infrastructure through the budget and reprioritize the budget in favor of other programs.
We fully fund without question any number of social service, economic development and experimental education and health programs, costing billions, while our roads and bridges – one of the basic functions of state government – disintegrate.
The current system of maintaining roads through borrowing holds voters and legislators over a barrel – either we agree to saddling future taxpayers with millions in excess debt for non-emergency items or our potholes might not get fixed.
Borrowed money should not be used for maintenance – only for large and long term capital improvements. It not only creates a “feast or famine” situation for highway contractors, it ultimately results in inferior roadways and inferior they are!
Roads and bridges in Maine have been neglected for decades. It will take billions of dollars and years of work to get them back in shape. This will only happen if we make them a state budget priority, not an afterthought lumped into massive catch-all borrowing package.
Rep. Jonathan McKane
District 51, Newcastle
