Our View - Monday

Highway blues

State transportation needs get short shrift

The key to representative government is that the people elect others to stand in their stead on matters of government. Voters cede, on a temporary basis, some of their individual sovereignty to elected officials. This allows everyday folks to live their lives, raise their families, run their businesses, etc., without having to concern themselves with the responsibilities of providing roads, sewer service, public safety and the other duties of government. In short, the people elect others to make some of the decisions in their place.

One downside of this arrangement is that elected officials often have a tendency to use their authority to force things on us for our own good. All too often, these programs and mandates aren’t within government’s legitimate authority, but when the people don’t object, government gets away with expanding its power.

That’s how Coloradans have gotten to the point where the Legislature is mulling tax increases to pay for transportation infrastructure, increased education spending and health care insurance for everyone. Gov. Bill Ritter has said he would support only one tax hike on the ballot, so each of those three interests view the others as the competition.

According to a Gazette report, on Wednesday, Ritter knocked transportation out of the running for increased tax support. He encouraged the Legislature to look at hiking vehicle registration fees to provide transportation funding. Nice dodge, governor.

Fee increases can be done legislatively, without a vote of the people, something required for tax hikes. Ritter backs the registration fee hike recommended by his Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation, but ruled out a ballot question for a tax increase because he doesn’t believe officials have made a strong enough case to take to the voters.

It seems as though the governor was looking for an excuse to derail a transportation tax ballot issue because it would compete with the more glamorous education or health care measures. Especially in Democratic circles, education and health care have much more cachet and so are more popular. No one wants his legacy to be “the highway governor,” especially if he could be “the education governor” or “the health care governor.” But there are a few problems with the Ritter’s approach to these three issues.

Colorado is in desperate need of new highway lanes. Perhaps even more pressing is the need to replace or maintain current highways and bridges, especially in rural areas of the state. And everyone uses state roads and highways, so we all have a stake in them. If the shakers and movers in Denver can’t make a case for a tax hike for roads, they probably should be in a different line of work; even in a shaky economy, it shouldn’t be a very tough sell.

Officials have estimated it would take $500 million just to maintain our current roads and bridges. The hike in registration fees Ritter seems to be backing would generate about that much money. So his solution is to maintain the status quo, not improve the state’s transportation infrastructure.

Switching from practical to principled arguments, of the big three issues competing for Ritter’s support, education and health care are not really government’s business; transportation is. Proponents for more government involvement in education and health care like to point out that the free market doesn’t work in those areas. Actually, it does, it just doesn’t work in ways those folks like. The market allocates limited resources to the places consumers deem them most needed.

If there are some left out by the market, private organizations exist to step in and fill the breach. The recently ended and highly successful Gazette Empty Stocking Fund campaign is a wonderful example of private citizens working together to provide a helping hand to those who need it. And many times private charities are able to respond quickly when needs arise, something government is not noted for.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.” Ideally, that would be government’s plan for education and health care. If that were the case, there would be no need for a tax or fee increase to pay for transportation.

A weighty decision

We often read and hear reports about the epidemic of obesity in the United States. Recent news has noted that it’s spreading to children, leading to spikes in the rates of obesity-related health problems such as Type 2 diabetes. Government agencies have begun addressing this issue by banning or limiting the sale of candy and sugary drinks in schools and forcing restaurants to stop using trans fats in their products. The only way to get results on a problem this big is government action, right? Wrong.

Local entrepreneur Steve Bigari is taking on childhood obesity by attacking it where kids play. The co-owner of Mr. Bigg’s Family Fun Center is doing away with the center’s successful and popular all-you-can-eat pizza buffet and replacing it with healthier alternatives. Not to worry, kids; according to a report in Thursday’s Gazette, you’ll still be able to get pizza, but it will be sold by the slice.

In addition to the demise of the pizza buffet, Mr. Biggs will offer smaller portions of the perennial kid favorite, frenchfries. And patrons can pair those fries with turkey burgers or panini sandwiches.

Who says the market doesn’t respond to societal issues? Bigari shows that entrepreneurs are able to indentify a problem and take action to solve it. Nice work, Steve. We need more people like you.