Highway fund called off-limits to education

Gov. Olene Walker's new paths to public education improvements better not be built with money from the Centennial Highway Fund, some state lawmakers said.

If Walker redirected $65 million from the fund to education, the state would not be able to make its Centennial bond payments due this year, according to legislators who've been studying road funding issues for the past nine months.

The Transportation Planning Task Force, created by the 2003 Legislature, presented its findings and recommendations Wednesday to the Transportation Interim Committee.

Among its conclusions is that the Centennial Highway Fund, or CHEF, is not structured efficiently and additional money is needed from the general fund to complete the statewide project list and retire its debt.

Walker hinted last week she may tap into the CHEF, funded primarily through a portion of the state gasoline tax, to finance a competency-based education system. "I would have great concern" if Walker follows through with her suggestion, said task force co-chairwoman Rep. Becky Lockhart, R-Provo. "If we take any more out in this next fiscal year, we won't be able to make our payments."

Sen. Bill Hickman, R-St. George, likened Walker's idea to a tax increase.

"There's only one other solution for paying off the debt — a tax increase in some other area. So what you're really doing is increasing taxes for education, so I hope everybody understands that."

Hickman said the CHEF has become the state's "rainy day fund" and suggested there have been too many raids on its resources already.

That was the observation of the task force, too. It said the CHEF's hurried inception and open-ended structure has resulted in pillaging, project reshuffling, inaccurate financial estimates and a schedule of bonds paid off 10 years after Centennial work is completed in 2007.

"Transportation funding is one of the greatest fiscal challenges we have in this state, with many competing demands," said Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Sandy, the task force's other co-chairwoman.

"The CHEF, as we discussed it, was a solution that was relatively quick in being put together."

The task force is not recommending an increase in that gas tax, as other organizations, including the Wasatch Front Regional Council and the state Department of Transportation, have assumed in their transportation planning efforts.

Walker has suggested simply giving UDOT the funds it needs and letting the department decide when and how to spend it, rather than "robbing Peter to pay Paul" as has been the case with the CHEF.

While recommending additional revenue for the CHEF, the task force also suggested the Legislature adopt a "comprehensive transportation finance plan" giving the state and local governments "tools" to finance transportation improvements.

Those tools could include a shift in state budgeting to give more money to transportation or an increase in registration fees, drivers' license fees, fuel taxes, impact fees, sales taxes on transportation related products, hotel room taxes and rental car fees.

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E-mail: zman@desnews.com

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