A showdown is looming over raising the gas tax to generate some $2 billion for road and bridge repairs. Leading Democrats have proposed a complex calculus involving hiking, cutting and phasing out an array of taxes. They’re up against a powerful governor who’s resisted all tax increases. NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams spoke with the former NJ Transit executive director and the founding director of the Alan Voorhees Transportation Center Martin Robins who says none of the proposed plans will be enough to cover the cost of refilling the Transportation Trust Fund.
Williams: Everyone’s focusing on the $2 billion. Is $2 billion enough?
Robins: Two billion dollars will do. It will do. I think that the thing that controlled the amount of money that the Legislature would dare to raise was to keep the ultimate gas price below that of the neighboring states of New York and Pennsylvania.
Williams: And it’s just below. It takes us from second lowest gas prices to the seventh highest.
Robins: Right, exactly. We are 49th so we’re due for a jump.
Williams: What should we be focusing on here?
Robins: I think what we have to focus on really is getting the bill passed and getting the money in hand. If it isn’t, if you focus on the alternative of having no money and having contractors having to stop work all over the state of New Jersey watching our facilities further decay and really New Jersey become a backwater in terms of attracting investment.
Williams: Back in 2003, hard to believe, a commission Gov. McGreevey put together to study this suggested what we needed in 2003 was $3.8 billion so why, it feels like a low ball here.
Robins: It depends on what your appetite is to do things. At that time there was some major objectives in front of Gov. McGreevey and his staff. Things have occurred in the last 15 years and probably the needs are somewhere between $2 billion and $3.5 billion but as I said because we have allowed this to go the way that it has gone, where there is a need to enact a very huge gas tax, we just can get what we can get and so it’s, I’m not quarreling with the amount. I am just so desirous that there actually is enough money to the transportation mangers so that our system can be rehabilitated and in very limited places expanded and we can see some life being infused in New Jersey’s transportation system.
Williams: This is a problem not unique to New Jersey, right?
Robins: Well, I think New Jersey has really put itself in a terrible box. The national program has floundered as well. There hasn’t been a federal gas increase since 1993 and so what we’re seeing is the amount of money coming from the federal government has basically remained steady and more and more of it is coming out of the general fund and not the Highway Trust Fund. So the federal government’s program is in trouble. But our state really came from being the envy of every other state around us when the Transportation Trust Fund was first enacted to becoming really a laggard and in great danger of losing ground very, very substantially.
Williams: Our transportation infrastructure is our life blood. Are you confident that the TTF — the Transportation Trust Fund — can be funded?
Robins: Can be funded?
Williams: Yeah.
Robins: Meaning that the Legislature will pass it? Well, I’m not too good at predicting what the Legislature will do and I’m even worse at predicting what Gov. Christie will do because he has threatened to veto this for reasons that I can’t even begin to understand, but I’m hopeful that the situation is so dire and that enough Republicans are now ready to join with the Democrats that something will be done and good sense will prevail.