By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — A sales tax and highway bonds, both high on the Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance’s list of possible new road funding sources, got low marks from the public in an unscientific survey on the panel’s website, according to results released today.

The committee has been meeting for more than year and has discussed a variety of funding options to address what highway officials say is about $19 billion in needs over a 10 year period. The committee has set a Dec. 1 deadline to make recommendations to the governor and Legislature.

Of the 92 people who completed the survey, 11 percent said highway bonds were “the fairest way to pay for highways, roads, streets and bridges.” Three percent favored a sales tax.

Twenty-nine percent said restructuring existing taxes and fees was the best way to go, 20 percent favored raising fuel taxes, 18 percent said utilize other user fees and 19 percent suggest finding other new revenue sources.

Sen. John Paul Capps, D-Searcy, chairman of the panel, said he was not surprised by the survey results.

“A sales tax is a regressive tax, there’s no way of getting around that,” Capps said. “The only bad part about that is that a sales tax is the only way we can get a large amount of money for anything, whether it’s schools or prisons, roads or anything else.”

Capps, who stressed he was not speaking for a sales tax as a way to fund highway improvements, said that “some times you have to do things you don’t really want to do in order to accomplish what you think is best.”

He said he believes that’s where some members are on a sales tax for highway improvements.

“They know its takes something like a sales tax to bring in large amounts of money. It’s not what they really prefer to do,” he said.

Capps said he was pleased that participants thought restructuring existing taxes and fees was the fairest funding mechanism.

Last week, Conway Mayor Tab Townsell, a member of the panel, said a bond issue and tax increase were at the top of list of potential funding sources that the committee is considering. The committee is to meeting again Oct. 10 to narrow down its choices.

In the survey, participants also were asked to name “the most critical areas that need attention,” and 61 percent said pot holes and cracked pavement. Fifty percent said relieving congestion, 47 percent said widening narrow roads and 39 percent said constructing new highways to connect more of the state.

Also, 55 percent of respondents said the current highway funding system is “falling behind what is needed.”
Consultant Craig Douglass released results of the survey.

Douglass’ firm, Craig Douglass Communications of Little Rock, was hired in April to help the committee organize and gather information during a series of public meetings.

The $50,000 contract ran through July 1 and gave the committee the option of retaining the firm’s services after July 1 for $5,250 a month.