JOHN PERKINS
With apologies to my friend, Charles Marohn, founder of Strong Towns, “The illusion of wealth” has been our stock in trade here dating all the way back to when we were truly “a city on the grow.”
Now we are more like “the Other Side” (of the tracks). If you were following discussions this year about building expensive new buildings and highways here, you heard a councilman note that it had been decades since he had seen a huge construction crane downtown. The illusion of wealth.
When he was chair of the State Senate Transportation Committee in 2015, then-State Sen. Robert Adley (R-Bossier) said, “Louisiana has a history of spending money on interstates instead of paying to maintain existing roadways and bridges.”
Two years ago, Louisiana had a $17 billion dollar backlog of unfunded mega-projects which would include state and local matching funds. Shreveport is chipping in $3 million on the new $90 million Barksdale Gate project, for instance. So is Caddo. Are we wealthy yet?
There was also another $17 billion in unfunded Infrastructure repair projects, too. That means river and canal dredging, bridge repairs, and highways and airports. $35 billion dollars needed to build everything on our wish list and fix everything we have built already.
Reminds me of stepping over broken toys from last Christmas, while my toddler was busy circling new toys in a catalogue that he hoped Santa would bring this year.
Louisiana could fix all the bad infrastructure and build everything we hope for if we would only raise our fuel tax around 55 cents a gallon. Easy, right?
But if we do raise fuel taxes, trucking Industry officials say they will fuel up in Texas before crossing into Louisiana, and we lose that revenue. This is the same lobbying group that is insisting on a second bridge across the Mississippi at Baton Rouge.
If we are not wealthy enough to fix all the Infrastructure we have built already, would building more Infrastructure really build wealth into our economy. Mr. English’s SERT Force “believes” it would build wealth. But what is that mechanism of growth, and when does it kick in?
NLCOG head Kent Rogers estimates that if all goes quickly, we can drive on that last segment of I-49 through Shreveport in 2038 A.D. Is that when we would start to see the money flowing and be able to fix everything up?
What if we used federal stimulus money to fix the bad Infrastructure here? The SERT polled neighborhoods and made a list of streets and drainage that have been neglected too long. With that newly printed federal money, we could pay down our huge debt on water and sewer repairs, fix potholes and drive on newly repaved streets. Even repair the shovel-ready Jimmie Davis Bridge.
Borrowing more money to build new Infrastructure while letting everything else deteriorate is like using a credit card to rent a Lincoln Navigator to go to the family reunion. The illusion of wealth.
THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE August 28 ISSUE OF FOCUS SB - THE INQUISITOR.