From the Rome News-Tribune --

THAT OLD JUNKER clanking down the taxation highway spewing smoke is Gov. Sonny Perdue’s newest miracle fix to the state’s transportation needs. The only miracle is that it’s still running and that so many folks actually think it will get them somewhere.

It’s rather plain that the governor, plus a considerable number in the General Assembly, don’t have a clue as to how roads get built and paid for. Nor can the citizens escape a share of the blame as they like their taxes low while keeping their expectations for four-lanes high. Georgia’s 7.5-cent motor-fuel tax per gallon is half to a third that of our neighbors and lowest in the nation to boot.

Toss in the supposed bookkeeping mess at the Department of Transportation, which the governor last year leveraged into allowing himself and the legislators (i.e., the politicians) to decide where any and all roads, bridges, etc. will go instead of the board constitutionally charged with distributing such revenues, and matters get even worse.

Nobody much understands the row over bookkeeping and the supposed multi-billion-dollar shortfalls which come down to an argument to whether annual books should be kept on a cash or accrual basis. So, let’s simplify it in layman’s terms.

CASH MEANS you can’t buy whatever unless you’ve got the money in your hand. Accrual means spreading your purchase payments out over years based on expected future income (such as you’ve got a good job and credit rating). How long would the new car and home sales markets survive if their customers all had to have cash up front?

This argument about how to pay and when to pay has torpedoed road building in this state even more than have the plunging tax revenues. One of the governor’s purported answers is to borrow $300 million for roadwork this year and he recommends to his successors that they do the same for the nine years to follow for a total of $3 billion.

OK, let’s simplify that one a bit as well after first passing on observations from David Doss of Rome, this region’s veteran member of the State Transportation Board. Before the politicians started pouring nails on the roadway, $300 million is what the board was letting in construction contracts in a single good month. What $300 million buys isn’t all that much, given how costly such work can be. It’s about what two interstate interchanges cost. Plus, the current gridlock caused by a political argument has probably caused 10,000 or so construction workers to be among the unemployed and a number of businesses to go belly up at a terrible time to heap new woe on existing economic misery.

AS FOR understanding added borrowing at a time when the state is making $1.3 billion in annual payments to cover past principal plus interest: Say your credit card has a max of $10,000. You already owe $7,000 — about where the state stands on the one it took out in your name. So, are you going out and use up the last of it even as your income, and ability to repay, is going down as is the state’s via declining tax revenues?

Of course not. Few of us are that dumb or irresponsible. It would be more a sign of desperation than anything else.

Then there’s the revived, revised plan to add a penny sales tax, on everything, to buy more roads on a regional basis. Last year that was suggested as a statewide penny but faded as it became plain voters would never approve any such thing, given most of them believe all the money would go to Atlanta anyway.

Hence, the new notion of proposing such taxes on a “regional” basis by groupings of counties. Some places, like the gridlocked Atlanta metro, would plainly favor such a thing. Instead of a divide-and-conquer strategy is more like a divide-and-tax plan.

That one was also suggested a year ago but with a big difference: The voters of a single county could opt out. This time, counties that don’t like it would have to pay for the majority ruling elsewhere.

THESE REGIONS are to be based on the 12 existing regional planning commis-sions in the state. Pop quiz: Which are the counties lumped in with Floyd in this region (the headquarters of which is actually in Rome)?

Answer: Bartow, Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Fannin, Gilmer, Gordon, Haralson, Murray, Paulding, Pickens, Polk, Walker, Whitfield.

Now then, what is the population and hence voting strength of those counties with an interstate already running through them and with a road-building interest most concentrated upon easing access to and from the same? Floyd, the largest of the non-interstate counties, and the others similarly located, would be overwhelmed in any election to decide where penny-tax projects go.

Not only that but Floyd, along with several of the others sure to be outvoted, might have a considerable interest in better access to/from neighboring Alabama, which they border. The more interior and populous counties have little such interest.

In other words, this newest “regional” scheme would wind up not only continuing the old peeve about how Floyd Countians pay for Atlanta’s roads but actually risks making matters worse.

MUCH AS WE like our neighboring counties, making Greater Romans pay an extra penny of tax on everything they buy to give to others is worse. And, much as they might like us, it is doubtful they would like giving us their pennies any better.

The state needs to park all this taxation trickery and instead fund needed highways in the nice, clean, simple way in which those who drive the most pay the most: Raise the fuel tax per gallon pumped.

Or is that just too simple for politicians to understand?