David Michael Miller
In her first budget Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has established a signature issue: transportation.
In both her capital and operating budgets the mayor has jumped in with both feet behind bus rapid transit (BRT), an initiative that was begun under her predecessor, Paul Soglin.
The basic idea behind BRT, which is a well-established and proven system, is to establish a few high-volume, high-service routes with limited stops. Initial routes would use East Washington Avenue and University Avenue. BRT has widespread support. Liberals like BRT because they see it as advancing social justice while the business community likes it because they see it as workforce transportation.
The catch is that it’s really expensive. The initial system in Madison is projected to cost around $130 million with maybe half coming from the feds. A $65 million local price tag would make this one of the most expensive local initiatives of all time. So, Rhodes-Conway is proposing a new city wheel tax of $40. It would show up on your annual vehicle registration fee and it would be added to Dane County’s $28 wheel tax that went into effect a year ago.
The funny thing about that county tax is that it slid in under the radar. It created no controversy and little press coverage. Don’t expect the same for the mayor’s proposal.
It’s not that there will be push back on the council from conservatives who oppose higher taxes. There are no such conservatives on the Madison city council right now. I actually think that’s too bad. Principled fiscal conservatives like former Alds. Zach Brandon and Jed Sanborn played an important role in questioning expenditures. But like most things in the mainstream of Madison politics today, the argument will likely be between the left and the far left.
Someone will surely point out that low-income families own cars too. Others will highlight the fact that the wheel tax is a flat tax worse than the property tax. While the same rate applies to all property, you pay more if you have a more expensive house. But with the wheel tax, you’ll pay the same $40 whether you own a rusty 2003 Chevy or a brand new Tesla.
So, it’s a safe bet that the council will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how not to charge car owners below a certain income or how to funnel the benefits back to them. The counter argument is that investing in the transit system will have a disproportionate benefit for lower income people. Anyway, they’ll be constrained by state law on how the tax can be applied.
In the end the council is likely to approve the new tax because it has to. They won’t be able to balance the budget without it. That’s because the mayor is using the wheel tax not just to improve transit, but to supplant general fund revenue that would otherwise go to the bus system. Then she’s using that money to fund other things in the budget not related to transportation.
The mayor isn’t trying to pull a fast one here. She’s upfront about it, explaining it clearly in her own overview of her budget. After pointing out that some of the wheel tax revenue will go directly to the Metro bus system, she writes, “The remainder of the vehicle registration fee will replace some of Madison’s unsustainable subsidy to Metro Transit. This frees up property tax revenue that will prevent cuts to critical functions such as police, fire, health, and other community services.”
It’s essentially a workaround of state-imposed levy limits. That’s fine with me since I’m against levy limits in the first place. We’ve always had limits on taxation. They’re called elections. If voters think they’re being taxed too much they can toss the rascals out. But what’s too much in Madison doesn’t necessarily equal what voters in, say, New Berlin think is being overtaxed. Local priorities should apply. Instead, the Legislature in its wisdom has taken the political values of New Berlin and imposed them on the entire state.
In any event, the mayor has set up her budget so that removing the wheel tax would blow a hole in it that cannot be patched with another source of revenue and this is not a council inclined to cut spending. If there’s any kind of fight she’ll win.
But even with the wheel tax, is there any way to pay for a $65 million local investment in BRT and should we? The $40 wheel tax will only produce about $8 million a year and, as pointed out, the mayor has already claimed the first year’s revenues for improvements to the existing bus system and to help balance her overall budget.
And the deeper question goes to the future of transportation overall. I like BRT but I wonder if its time hasn’t come… and gone. Big changes are coming as automated vehicles surge onto the scene. The new technology is likely to lead to major disruptions in how we get around. No one can predict what that future will look like, but you have to question whether any kind of fixed route system is in the cards.
It might be best to hold off on big investments in BRT until we have a better sense of where the whole field of transportation is headed. The modestly aggressive move that the new mayor is making toward BRT probably amounts to a responsible investment at this point in the game.
