Here and Now - State Budget, Transportation
The broadway musical RENT (which recently came to the valley) features a catchy number that starts like this:
"Five-hundred twenty-five thousand six-hundred minutes..." The refrain ends with the question "How to do you measure, measure a year?"
In legislative terms, as of midnight Sunday, lawmakers have "two-thousand eighty minutes and zero seconds... to approve a budget, a budget to begin the new year." Question is, will they?
And will it be enough to pay the RENT?
If Here and Now is starting to sound like a record that's skipping--playing the same song over and over--I apologize. There are plenty of other important topics to discuss. Just one problem. Nothing compares to the historic almost $4-BILLION budget deficit the state faces. And solving it is proving to be as elusive as finding DB Cooper and all the money he had with him when he jumped from a jet into the northwest wilderness.
Okay, I digress. But the point is, we know there are plenty of important topics to get to, but first we must make sense of what's going on a 1700 Washington west of downtown Phoenix.
That being said, one of the important topics we plan to discuss is transportation--buses, light rail, cars, roads, interstates, airplanes, etc. Fares for mass transit goes up Wednesday. And guess what? Revenues for expanding light rail and bus service is not going up. It's going down. Meaning there are fewer tax dollars to pay for it.
And not just mass transit, but for building roads, highways, freeways, and the like. Less driving is one option, (right?) but another is to speak the unspeakable word at the capitol. So I will spell it slow as not to cause such a fuss. Ready? T-a-x-es! Anyone shooting yet? The bottom line. If we want our roads and interstates, then we have to pay for them somehow. And even those in the transportation industry think one fair way is to tax gas more, so those guys driving tricked out 4X4 trucks, will have something else they'll have to compensate for.
So, we plan to talk budget (again) and visit an issue important to everyone --transportation. Have a comment, question, or clever retort? Please submit it! We do have to moderate comments to keep those darn spammers from filling up our pages with their stupid pharmaceuticals and the like. So, if you don't see your comment, right away, no worries, it will be up soon. Thanks! Paul
