Minnesota Transportation Funding (General)

[acs]

God damnit Dibble just when you were doing so well you just had to shortchange your own constituents...

[twincitizen]

Here's how your Senators voted on Dibble's transportation bill. Appears to be split exactly along party lines, with 1 DFL and 3 GOP not voting.


How the hell do you reconcile this in conference committee with the House and Senate bills being so far apart? I cannot see the House signing off on the gas tax for road funding. Very likely can't see them going for the transit sales tax either. Could a compromise down to .25% (additional) in the cards? It's been said before that the DFL would have to concede or compromise on some other GOP policy objective to get them to meet in the middle on transportation funding... but I wonder exactly what that could be. I don't see the DFL compromising on much, if any of the GOP's tax bill or budget bill.

[mattaudio]

Outside chance, but I've wondered if SWLRT would be the sacrificial lamb to the outstate GOP to try and get other TPO funding moving forward.

[Viktor Vaughn]

I've been wondering about that too. The cost increase news was released at the perfect time to set up that type of deal.

[acs]

I actually think it's going to be the other way around. The house proposal doesn't fund future transit but does provide the state match for SWLRT. I think what they're trying to do is stick this albatross to the Dems and make them defend a project they don't like because it's the only transit both sides agree to fund. A one time appropriation of $200MM is much more palatable to conservatives than a tax increase to fund many more such projects.

There's also much less for the GOP to lose this way. They can say "hey, we did want compromise! we offered state money to fund transit projects! Those liberals just wanted to blow it all on a $2b choo choo."

[Viktor Vaughn]

I get your point, but sooner or later (probably later) they're going to have to cut a deal. Killing SW in that deal gives the Republicans a victory for killing the "boondoggle" and allows the democratics to ditch their albatross, blame it on Republicans and get money for transit.Win/win.

Republicans don't have the upper hand. They already overplayed shutdown politics. But they're going to have to get something. Eliminating Minnesota Care, as they voted to do, isn't going to be it.

Who knows what's going to happen.. but a deal along these lines seems possible.

[xandrex]

How the hell do you reconcile this in conference committee with the House and Senate bills being so far apart? I cannot see the House signing off on the gas tax for road funding. Very likely can't see them going for the transit sales tax either. Could a compromise down to .25% (additional) in the cards? It's been said before that the DFL would have to concede or compromise on some other GOP policy objective to get them to meet in the middle on transportation funding... but I wonder exactly what that could be. I don't see the DFL compromising on much, if any of the GOP's tax bill or budget bill.

Would it even be good to get a 0.25% sales tax for transit. That's probably going to tap out any increases for the foreseeable future. I just can't see a quarter-cent increase this year and then the DFL able to wrangle through another quarter- or half-cent increase later.

[Tiller]

How high of a sales tax increase would we need to supplant state funding for metro transit?

[twincitizen]

Good question!
What is the annual contribution from the state to Metro Council/Transit for operating purposes?
What is the annual revenue of the existing .25% CTIB tax?
Would another .25% be enough to remove transit from the state budget? (of a .5% increase to .75% total)
(i.e. .5% for system expansion, .25% operating budget, gradually transitioning to vice-versa as the LRT/BRT system is built out)

[RailBaronYarr]

Good question!
What is the annual contribution from the state to Metro Council/Transit for operating purposes?
What is the annual revenue of the existing .25% CTIB tax?
Would another .25% be enough to remove transit from the state budget? (of a .5% increase to .75% total)
(i.e. .5% for system expansion, .25% operating budget, gradually transitioning to vice-versa as the LRT/BRT system is built out)

CTIB brought in just over $108.3m in 2013 (after Dept of Revenue took a small cut from the $109.3 collected), most of that from the .25% sales tax (though they also get $20 from every motor vehicle sale in the 5 county area). I calculated from DoR numbers that a 0.25% sales tax in 2013 generated $92.3m in 2013, so about $16m comes from the vehicle tax.

According to this CTIB revenues account for 6% ($19.4m) of operating revenues, and just 1.6% ($4.8m) from state general funds. Looking forward on the 2014 capital budget, the state is only forecast to give ~$30m a year, bouncing up and down from 6 to 9% of capital expenditures, which include finishing the Green Line, bus expansion, SWLRT, & other transitways.

So, we could guess that the state is only kicking in (out of general funds, not including MVST) $35-40m a year for operating and capital budgets. Not that crazy to think bumping the CTIB tax rate up to just .35% would be enough to cut them out. Does that seem right? Of course, .5% makes more sense since the additional transitways we're building will need operating funds as they open, and unless CTIB shifts entirely to operating mode, I don't know that .25% will cut it. Maybe I'm wrong.

[acs]

MNDOT Chair makes his case on MInnpost. Go figure, he hits on expansion of highways, helping businesses, inducing "growth", and reducing "congestion". Socialize the costs, privatize the profits.

http://www.minnpost.com/community-voice ... g-solution

[acs]

Scott county decides to enact their own .5 cent sales tax for transportation:
http://finance-commerce.com/2015/05/sco ... sales-tax/

On one hand, they didn't join the CTIB and drag even more money away, on the other hand this is going to be purely used for road capacity additions.

[Rich]

Actually, $1 million a year will go toward transit. That’s 17% of the total.

http://www.swnewsmedia.com/shakopee_val ... 2bf14.html

[Anondson]

Huh. Interesting considering the recent Streets.mn post on reconsidering the transit tax...

[David Greene]

I forget the rules. Can any member county of CTIB impose its own sales tax or only those counties that are not part of CTIB?

[Silophant]

I think it's the latter, or presumably Hennepin or Ramsey or both would have gone for it by now.

[twincitizen]

Yep, somehow the all DFL legislature of 2013-14 was able to pass a provision allowing all 82 non-CTIB counties in the state to implement a local option sales tax (up to .5% even, twice that of CTIB!) without affording CTIB counties the same ability. Way to go DFL!

Literally the least they could have done at the same time was allow CTIB counties to go up to .5% as well instead of the current .25%

[RailBaronYarr]

Hold on. So if I'm reading/understanding y'all right, the only thing a county would have to do in order to enact a 1/2 cent sales tax of their own for transportation (any transportation, not just transit) is to have a list of projects. But none of the CTIB counties are included in that because we opted in to a dedicated transit-only sales tax?

Also, why is Scott in such a hurry to enact this? Wouldn't the proposed DFL .75% metro sales tax increase not apply to them as long as they're not part of CTIB? Maybe I've been misreading the MoveMN/DFL proposals..

Also:

The advantage of having the funding paid for by the sales tax rather than on the property tax levy, said Freese, is that the county will be able to tap into the large numbers of people who visit Scott County for entertainment purposes. About 30 percent of the annual revenue collected through the sales tax will be from non-resident consumers.

I'm not arguing the logic. But can you imagine the outrage from the suburbs if Minneapolis had said this outright to fund its own transit projects? Wasn't that their exact reaction? Same for the outstate>metro "you can't enact a sales tax without our approval because we sometimes visit the metro and that would be burdensome to us" message. This whole thing is super odd.

[twincitizen]

The Senate transpo/transit bill this year was a .5% increase only the 5 CTIB counties. Likely because they don't want to confuse transit governance any further and Carver/Scott already have the ability to impose their own sales tax if so desired. It sounds like Carver County commissioners do not share this desire currently. I'm surprised there wasn't more vocal opposition in Scott, but I guess they are more dominated by what Shakopee wants, and Shakopee has been very vocally in support of the tax. Sounds like they're pretty united down there about getting better river crossings, better transit service, etc. Interesting that they apparently collect that much sales tax from non-residents that they were able to sell that politically. Their sales tax in Scott will now be .25% higher than neighboring Burnsville/Dakota and .5% higher than Chaska/Carver.

[RailBaronYarr]

I thought the Senate's bill was a 3/4 cent bump, while Dayton's was a 1/2 cent? Mostly irrelevant though.