Idaho legislators will make a serious common-sense mistake if they adjourn the 2009 session with only a half-hearted program for funding roads and bridges.
The state's roadways are a vital element in Idaho's commerce and inter-city communication. Neglecting maintenance results in more traffic deaths and injuries, and causes vehicle damage.
Unhappily, a statesmanlike approach to state road needs has become lost in the often foolish, dogma-driven disputes that characterize Idaho legislative decision-making.
The no-new-tax bloc, which includes Democrats and Republicans, opposed raising the fuel tax by 7 cents, a change decades overdue. These obstructionists apparently believe the state's growing road network and increased miles of poorly maintained roads of 2009 can be miraculously fixed with funding revenues based on tax levels enacted a generation ago.
Anther bloc among lawmakers is miffed with Gov. Butch Otter's education funding and wants to punish him. Hello? It's road users who would be punished, not Otter. Then there's the group that wants to restructure the Idaho Transportation Department before providing sensible road funding.
So what does this food fight mean to the state's roads? It means yet more delays in urgent maintenance, more perils for drivers, more costs in vehicle repairs and higher road-repair costs if and when the Legislature begins to function in the public interest.
Unless lawmakers see the folly of postponing realistic taxing and funding, Idaho drivers face more years of using one of the nation's most neglected road systems with faint hope of any improvement.
