Gridlock On Transportation Issues

Last spring, a study released by the University of Connecticut concluded that persistent high unemployment, stagnating incomes, and weak real estate markets would stymie any chances the state might have for a meaningful economic recovery in the near term. Connecticut’s Center for Economic Analysis at UConn recommended the use of tax credits to help foster investment in manufacturing, the pharmaceutical industry, bioscience, and research that could create up to 40,000 high-paying jobs. The legislature and governor followed through with a new tax credit for wealthy individuals, so-called “angel investors,” who are willing to invest in companies viewed by the commissioner of Economic Development to be beneficial to the state. The effort is limited: $6 million a year for the next three years. The effort may be doomed, however, and not simply because the state is being so stingy with investment tax credits. Connecticut’s traffic congestion, it turns out, may be killing off investment in the state faster than even the most generous state program could hand out tax credits.

A draft report of the state’s Transportation Strategy Board calculates that Connecticut’s congested highways cost state businesses $670 million a year in productivity losses, increased operating expenses, and less effective employee recruitment efforts. (Most of those losses — $350 million — come from businesses in southwestern Connecticut.) The report offered this startling estimate as an example: state businesses suffer 32 million hours of shipping delays each year. That’s 3,652 years of waiting for late deliveries, or the equivalent of ten years of waiting around — every day of the year — at businesses across the state. No wonder businesses and jobs are going elsewhere.

The state has failed to maintain its transportation infrastructure, and now we are paying the price. Despite a $2.3 billion commitment to transportation, financed through state bonding initiatives in 2005 and 2006, the Transportation Strategy Board says Connecticut is addressing only 25 percent of its acute transportation deficiencies — and it can barely pay the debt service on the money it has already committed. Wholesale fuel taxes were raised by 50 percent between 2005 and 2007 to pay for the state’s transportation initiative, but our money-hungry legislature and the governor have used more than half of the $1.5 billion raised by that tax on programs that have nothing to do with transportation. Additionally, the Transportation Strategy Board projected last July that the state will fall short by $300 million to $500 million through 2014 in funding for the maintenance of Connecticut’s existing transportation network. This doesn’t even count the public transit and rail initiatives desperately needed to relieve the pressure on state highways.

Against this backdrop, spurring investment in Connecticut’s economic future with a three-year, $6 million program of tax credits can be seen for what it is: a pathetically inadequate gesture designed more for political cover than for helping businesses in any meaningful way.

No matter who we elect in November as governor or to the legislature, Connecticut’s economy will continue to sputter as long the state ignores its critical transportation problems. And if the economy continues to stagnate, it won’t matter what other priorities we might have; continued unemployment, sagging incomes, and the depressed real estate market will not be able to generate the revenues needed to meet those needs. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait 3,652 years for our elected leaders to end the gridlock on this issue.