Should Infrastructure be Politically Controlled?
 

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http://reason.com/news/show/121827.html

Politicians are drawn to tragedy like flies to pie. Take the Minneapolis bridge collapse. President Bush took a 10-minute helicopter fly-over of the bridge—just long enough to appear compassionate and promise to rebuild the bridge.

But you have to wonder what makes this a federal responsibility. The typical excuse is that the state can't afford such pricey projects, so it behooves the federal government to step in to help. Of course the federal government is also deeply in debt, so it's difficult to pin down exactly what "afford" actually means. Either way, Washington appears set to provide about $250 million to Minneapolis for a new bridge.

Whatever Minnesota's spending constraints, the state can apparently afford to spend hundreds of millions for corporate welfare to Carl Pohlad, the owner of the Minnesota Twins, for a new baseball stadium. Hennepin County, where the bridge is located, recently passed a new .15 percent sales tax solely to pay for Pohlad's new stadium.

...

The bridge didn't collapse because Minnesota couldn't afford to maintain it. The bridge collapsed because the state had other priorities, unrelated to the proper functions of government.

The problem isn't unique to Minnesota. If you compare the percentage of bridge deficiencies with taxes raised, you'll find that some of the highest-taxed states also have some of the worst problems with bridge maintenance. Rhode Island is in the top ten when it comes to taxes collected, and has a higher percentage of deficient bridges than any other state. Pennsylvania has taxes higher than 31 other states, and a bridge deficiency rate that is the second worst in the country. New York is number ten in taxes collected, and is one of the worst when it comes maintenance. In fact, half of the top ten-taxed states are in the bottom ten when to comes to bridge maintenance.

President Bush is now promising around $250 million for a new bridge in Minneapolis. That is considerably less than what the state gave Pohlad, and $750 million less than the state poured into its various sports stadiums. And of course, simply repairing the bridge would have cost a lot less than now having to replace it.

Even if we assume that maintaining local bridges is a federal project, the involvement of politicians means perverted priorities, and maintenance of existing infrastructure, which has no clear constituency, isn't going to rank very high.

Consider the earmark debate. As the Wall Street Journal recently editorialized, "The $250 million in emergency appropriations now flying through Congress for Minnesota is slightly more than half the amount appropriated to Alaska for the 'Bridge to Nowhere' and 'Don Young's Way,' two of the more infamous earmarks from the 2005 bill."

And here's the kicker:
Earmarks divert spending from the necessary projects to the frivolous. The New York Times reports that in spite of historically high spending on transportation, highway funds are allocated according to "the political muscle of lawmakers, rather than dire need," which means "construction on new, politically popular roads and transit projects rather than the mundane work of maintaining the worn-out ones."

The Times adds that politicians are keen to fund politically-correct projects for transport over actual maintenance projects. This has "resulted in expensive transit systems that are not used by the vast majority of American commuters."

The chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is Representative James Oberstar, a Democrat from Minnesota. Oberstar recently bragged about bagging $12 million in funds for the state, but the New York Times notes that $10 million of that "is slated for a new 40-mile commuter rail line to Minneapolis, called the Northstar," and "the remaining $2 million is divided among a new bike and walking path and a few other projects, including highway work and interchange reconstruction."

Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says that the political process means "that routine but important things like maintenance always get shortchanged because it's nice for somebody to cut a ribbon for a new structure."


Hans Bader at the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that in Europe, some commentators have been posting messages at Dutch and German newspaper web sites blaming the collapse on low taxes. And C. Michael Walton of the University of Texas seems to endorse this. Walton says that the lack of maintenance was the result of "our backlash to increases in taxes." And even though Sen. Schumer correctly identified the misallocation of transportation spending, his own solution was also to call for new taxes, not for he reallocation of wasted funds.

However, the problem in Minnesota was not the result of low taxes. It's the seventh highest-taxed state in the country.

I'm personally familiar with two other bridge collapses, 1983 collapse of the Mianus Bridge, which killed three, and the 1989 collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct in Oakland, which killed forty.

The Mianus Bridge is in Connecticut, the state with the second highest tax level in the country. And the Cypress Street Viaduct is in California, which ranks at number 12. Both collapses were maintenance related. Though an earthquake triggered the Oakland collapse, the state had neglected to fund retrofitting for the bridge for years, in favor of other projects...
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The rest of the article features a rather elegant solution to political control of road maintenance, but I think fails to address how to create new infrastructure.


Should roads remain politically controlled in light of the tendency for pols to divert funds to pet projects? The obvious solution should be to force them out of office, but the difficulty there lies in information, which the average voter has practically none of.

America itself has one of the worst incumbency rates in the world.

If we can't trust democratic processes to force our governments to actually perform their duties, why should we entrust them with those duties?

Should infrastructure be publically owned? Hell yes. the only reason government exists is to build and maintain infrastructure, to provide necessary social services (fire protection, etc) and for defense.

This is as offensive to me as asking whether we should replace our army with mercenaries.

http://colonelskills.belkanairforce....ages/ace/1.gif

Wow, you missed the question big time.

Speaking as a Canadian near the Minnesota border, I think a sports stadium in this particular case probably warrants public funds, as there really is a shitload of tourism dollars to be had from milking the Canadian MLB and NFL fans.

That'd have to equate to some pretty significant sales tax returns.

Nevermind the precedent it sets where team owners can extort taxpayer money by threatening to take their business to another state.

Ideally states shouldn't put up with this kinda bullshit, and owners would actually have to invest in their venues, but somebody somewhere is going to want the team bad enough to use money that isn't theirs.

I answered my own question, if you notice.

I'll bite though. If your article's solution isn't privately owned infrastructure, then what is it?

(you could've read the article)

The solution outlined by Peron is basically a private entity owned by the public. A non-profit corporately owned infrastructure where all of the locals are considered shareholders, giving everybody a controlling interest. Tasks are determined by a board appointed by the shareholders and their decisions are voted upon by the shareholders.

Any surpluses acquired through tolls are payed back to the public by virtue of their individual ownership, and amount of use.

I guess surpluses could also be used to appropriate new infrastructure in cooperation with local government, but the shareholders would be voting on that, too.

It basically takes politics out of the equation, and since all money is acquired directly through tolls, there's no way road money can be diverted to other projects.

*shrug*

Here's an opinion on the collapse though:
A bit more nuanced than it absolutely could've been avoided but still...

Uh, what projects were done before it, and if this were the case why would it have taken so long to retrofit the aqueduct, assuming that there was any intent to retrofit it in the first place?

No, it takes government out of the equation. The proposed corporate entity, its board, its shareholders and its activities would still be subject to politics.

I usually don't participate in PP threads because they tend to make my head hurt, but even I have to look at this and say "You can't be for real...". What I wanna know is, what are these "other projects"? I'm the type of person where you can say you have this and this and that and all this fooferah going on, but if I don't know what these "other projects" are or if there's no proof that all these projects even exist then it just kinda seems like said authors are speaking loudly just to hear themselves talk (IE talking out of your ass). Until we get this information, its a huge hole in the argument because there's no proof that any of this is even relevant or that "said author" isn't some nut with an agenda or otherwise.

But maybe that's just me and I missed something somewhere. **rereads thread a bit more thoroughly...**

He could be, sure. However, there's another set of problems like the accessibility of such records and budgets to the public.

In any case, it can absolutely be inferred that the Viaduct retrofitting wasn't given any priority by the government.

Well then be skeptical. It's only one part of an op/ed that concerns the politics surrounding a bridge collapse in 1989. The projects in question did not necessarily have to be unnecessary or frivolous, and if you'd notice they're not identified as such.

However, you could consider money diverted into projects whose purpose regards something other than preventing bridge collapses to be poor priorities, and it's certainly hard to argue that Oakland couldn't fund the bridge if it wanted to.

If you're talking about new infrastructure, that's essentially how it should work already. If you're talking about basic maintenance, then all owners have an interest in maintaining their roads.

you're right, I could have.

Oh, well then. I guess I'm not clear how I was mistaken when I said that infrastructure should be publically owned. Some sort of magic second government* is not public perse, no matter how many people are considered shareholders.

I don't know, Brady. I know that bad decisions were made at times, but I don't see how it would be helpful to make an entirely new concept of corporation / government that will handle a job that the government already does passibly well.

* that isn't elected or answerable to the sorts of things that government officials are answerable to! HOW COULD THIS FAIL.

I don't see how it functions as a secondary government, since governments have police power.

Passably well isn't exactly good enough, and I particularly don't think that an avoidable bridge collapse can be considered passable. (I'm not saying this is what you're saying, you know what I mean)

It's not just bridge collapses either, general maintenance and potholes are a significant problem in many areas. If people own the roads, then they have an interest in insuring that they are being well maintained. I'd much rather own the roads in my county and keep them well maintained instead of having my city be more interested in using tax dollars for a water park. (which they're going to build in a flood zone)

The problem with lack of infrastructure repair isn't government inefficiency, it's people's refusal to pay the tax levels necessary for the infrastructure they want. They want something for nothing.

Taxes aren't the problem, it's the appropriation of tax funds. If tax levels were a problem, Minnesota wouldn't have dropped 750,000,000 on a sports stadium for a private franchise.

They're already publically owned. If you don't have an interest in your roads now, you never will.

Extort?

Pretty much in all cases when a state/county/city wants to put up new taxes for a stadium, the citizens have to vote for it. Anecdotally, in my state, we always seem to pass new taxes for stadiums and pass transportation funding about 25% of the time.

Going with my state's 25% pass rate, I bet what would happen is that the shareholders would nominate board members who would pledge to spend none of the money so that everyone just gets the tolls back in taxes.

Which means that when disaster strikes and there is no money there, then we just have to dip into federal and state funding anyway.

And what Styphon said about the non-elimination of politics.

If that would be the case, though, then there's no amount of surpluses being made since nobody is using the shitty roads. There's also the matter of having to deal with potholes and various other road erosion in the course of personal use in the meantime.

Of course, if people are still incapable of acting rationally, despite the information made available to them, how does that change the present situation where the government neglects infrastructure and expects the Federal government to bail them out?

Yeah, extort. As in "Give me the money or I walk."

You're familiar with the Tragedy of the Commons, right? Shepherds overgraze the common land because it interests them in the short term. The problem with the Tragedy of the Commons is precisely that, the grazing land is a Commons, not owned by the shepherd. Since the land isn't theirs, it benefits them more to graze as much as possible to derive benefit, yet if they owned the land then there's an incentive to conserve and keep the land usable in the long term.

Without any personal incentives for conservation, reasonable use has to be enforced by law.

Public ownership is the same as the Commons. Nobody actually owns the land, but they do collectively through the proxy of government. Because individuals don't have a personal stake in the land, they're more likely to abuse it.

That's not a completely fair assumption, though. So long as funding for roads is controlled by politicians, voters have to weigh their attention to road maintenance with other issues that are important to them. They also have to consider alternatives. If challengers to incumbency are perceived to be worse then the voters have to settle for the lesser evil.

In this case, so long as the infrastructure is maintained by government, voters have to consider the overall performance of government, and be forced to accept conditions according to what they view to be a better-than-other scenario.

In the case of private ownership, however, the incentives for proper maintenance exist on the individual level. People don't want to use shitty roads, and the better their condition the greater flow of commerce and the greater the amount of surplus. Since there's no other way to appropriate the funds, the shareholders do not have to negotiate maintenance with other issues.

Problems begin to arise when you remember that the voters in the first model are the same people as the shareholders in the second. In neither model does an individual level of responsibility exist for road maintainence; in the former, the government retains responsibility, while in the latter, the proposed corporation does.

People who feel no particular need to vote in local elections won't feel any to vote for board members of this new corporation, either.