By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A decade after Arkansas voters approved a $1 billion plan to improve the state’s crumbling interstates, a select state panel will meet for the first time this week to begin charting a route to funding needed improvements on state highways.
The Legislature this year created the 19-member Arkansas Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance to study the nation’s 12th largest state highway system — covering about 16,000 miles — and recommend to the 2011 General Assembly ways to address needs that state highway officials say total more than $19 billion.
The panel is to meet Thursday at the state Capitol.
“Either we get more money to fund our highways or the price of fuel, asphalt and steel goes down, and we know that’s not going to happen,” said Rep. Allen Maxwell, D-Monticello, sponsor of the legislation that created the committee. “Either we need something that says we’ve got to do something or we’ve got to be satisfied with what we have.”
Maxwell noted that highway needs have continued to rise while the state Department of Highway and Transportation’s budget has remained stagnant. He said the highway panel, which includes seven legislators and 12 private citizens, is needed because the Legislature has not done enough in recent years to address the road improvements he deemed as “critical.”
Voters in 1999 approved a five-year, $1 billion interstate highway construction plan to fix 372 miles of the state’s 589-mile interstate highway system under a plan recommended by a special highway committee chaired by former Congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt of Harrison to repay special federal funding with highway bonds.
Most of the construction was completed by 2005.
That same year, the Arkansas Highway Commission and then-Gov. Mike Huckabee proposed a $1.3 billion road program that for the first time would tap the state’s general revenue to fund highway construction. The proposal won a House committee’s support but never came to a vote on the House floor.
Two years ago, highway officials again spoke of the need for improving state roads and the Legislature appropriated $56 million from a nearly $1 billion surplus for resurfacing projects. The Legislature in 2007 also reauthorized the Highway Commission to issue up to $575 million bonds for interstate maintenance, pending voter approval. Gov. Mike Beebe has said he likely will ask voters in 2010 to approve another bond program.
Before this year’s legislative session, Beebe made clear the state budget would be too tight in a souring economy to expect additional highway funding. The department did get a slight budget increase — enough to hire three new bridge inspectors and three assistant bridge inspectors.
The department also will benefit from an increase in the state severance on natural gas, which went into effect Jan. 1. Original estimates were that the tax hike would generate about $57 million in the first year, though the amount could be lower because of a drop in natural gas prices.
The law allocates 5 percent of the proceeds to general revenue to replace the old severance tax, which amounted to less than $700,000 in 2007. Of the rest, 70 percent goes for state highways and 30 is divided equally by cities and counties for local road work.
Here are the members of the 19-member Arkansas Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance, created by the Legislature this year to recommend funding sources for state highway system improvements.
The committee is composed of seven legislators and 12 private citizens:
- Sen. Gilbert Baker, R-Conway
- Sen. John Paul Capps, D-Searcy
- Sen. Paul Miller, D-Melbourne
- Rep. John Lowery, D-El Dorado
- Rep. Bruce Maloch, D-Magnolia
- Rep. Allen Maxwell, D-Monticello
- Rep. Bill Sample, R-Hot Springs
- Charles Dains of Conway
- Bill Fletcher of Hot Springs
- Wayne Hartsfield of Searcy
- Wes Fowler, Madison County Judge
- Mark Lambreth of Batesville
- Bill Lynch of Heber Springs
- David Malone, former state senator from Fayetteville
- Mark McBryde of Little Rock
- Jim Mckenzie of Little Rock
- Madison Murphy, Arkansas Highway Commission
- Tab Townsell, mayor of Conway
- Mark Wilson of Jacksonville
