Metro Pulse/Insights/Highway Funding

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by Joe Sullivan

Every day as I'm coming home from work my blood begins to simmer. It happens as I'm driving west on Neyland Drive toward my southbound turnoff onto Alcoa Highway. The ramp that used to let me get onto Alcoa directly from Neyland is gone, and now I must stay on Neyland to Kingston Pike and then loop back east on Kingston to its Alcoa Highway access point.

It's not this relatively minor inconvenience that bugs me. Rather, it's the thought that a whole lot better use could have been made of the $27 million that has been spent on the just-completed Alcoa Highway/ Kingston Pike/ Neyland Drive interchange. There's no gainsaying that the new interchange also provides some significant benefits to motorists, but they are mostly in the realm of niceties at a time when the state is starved for resources to meet what I would consider much more fundamental needs.

As my drive takes me past the UT campus, I think about the $24 million the state repeatedly has denied the university for renovation of outmoded Glocker Hall, to the detriment of its business school. I think about the $15 million commitment on which the Legislature reneged toward funding UT's Centers of Excellence research initiative, which could spur both the university and the state's economy. I think about impending state budget shortfalls, which mean that higher education will be once again get the short end of the stick.

You don't have to share my predilections for UT to conclude with me that our revenue-starved state shouldn't be setting its spending priorities in a way that precludes assessing the worth of a highway project relative to all other needs. Yet as long as the state's fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees remain dedicated by law to funding TDOT, no such prioritization can take place. However much incoming Gov. Phil Bredesen and the Legislature may have to cut in other areas to balance the state budget, TDOT will keep on pumping out its $618 million dedicated revenue stream (plus $773 million in matching federal funds) for highway projects.

Not even the opposition of a city to a project within its limits has stood in the way of TDOT's bulldozing up to now. Mayor Victor Ashe has vehemently opposed extension of the James White Parkway through South Knoxville to Chapman Highway, but work on the $36 million project has been scheduled to start this year all the same.

As a step in the right direction, Bredesen has promised a review of the project as well as a fresh look at the merits of the controversial $273 million beltway that would reroute Interstate 75 along the northwest perimeter of Knox County. But the incoming governor remains opposed to any diversion of TDOT's dedicated revenues for any other uses, "Regardless of whatever the budget pressures are, Gov. Bredesen has no intention of trying to...change the funding structure for our highway system," a spokesman was quoted as saying last week. Yet at the same time Bredesen is saying that budgetary pressures have gotten a lot worse than he could have imagined during last year's gubernatorial campaign and may necessitate across-the-board cuts in state funding for everything else. Why should highways be exempt?

The cynical answer is that the road builders' lobby has a stranglehold on our body politic. No amount of sloganeering on the part of Victor Ashe and many others that Tennessee is "First in roads, last in education" seems to shake state legislators from the belief that dedicated highway funds remain a sacred trust needed to assure the state's future well being. Indeed, it's seemed so unshakable that I've refrained in the past from trying to tilt at it lest I sound like Don Quixote.

What's emboldened me to do so now is last week's pointer in that direction by a highly respected legislator, Sen. Jim Kyle. "It would be a heck of a lot easier to find $100 million in the road fund than raising taxes $100 million or cutting the budget by $100 million," the Memphis Democrat told The Tennessean last week. Indeed, in the wake of last year's tax reform debacle and Bredesen's categorical "no new taxes" campaign pledge, raising taxes is no longer an option. And as vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Kyle knows how hard it is to cut established programs in order to come up with the money needed just to satisfy new, court-ordered spending mandates at a time when revenue growth remains anemic.

As much as I believe that highway spending should be just as subject to cuts as any other state outlay, I don't believe that local road projects, for the most part, are candidates for the cutting block. Many, such as the widening of Emory Road in North Knox, are long overdue. I also believe the widening of I-40/75 through West Knoxville deserves a high priority, especially because it can help prevent (along with several other new West Knoxville thoroughfares) the need for a sprawl-begetting beltway. Moreover, unlike my esteemed colleague Jack Neely, I don't favor tearing down I-40 through downtown. To the contrary, I believe it should be widened on a recessed basis that will eliminate the elevated barrier that now bisects the Fourth and Gill neighborhood. On the other hand, the James White Parkway extension through South Knoxville can surely be put on hold.

On a statewide basis, at the very least, revenues presently dedicated to TDOT should be drawn upon to cover the Department of Safety's budget as well. That one step would free up close to $116 million in state funds for other uses.