Suburban sprawl creating traffic bottlenecks? Hey, the poor will build you a new highway!

First, kudos to Dave Wells for his letter to the editor in Monday's East Valley Tribune. He was responding to conservative Tribune columnist Tom Patterson, who asserted in his October 1 column that “state leaders have mostly turned up their nose at … reducing corporate and individual income tax rates.” Patterson must have been out of state for the past couple years, since the legislature passed a 10% across the board reduction in income taxes in 2006. In fact, if not for that tax cut, Wells says, the state might not be faced with a deficit and possibly slashing services today.

But here's the funny thing about the Arizona legislature when it comes to taxes. The state had a huge surplus of close to $2 billion in 2006. We knew at the time, as we know today, that Arizona is not building adequate highways and other transportation infrastructure to keep up with our rapid growth. In fact, a task force convened by Governor Hull at the beginning of this decade said the state needs another $20 billion to fund more highways over the next 20 years. Yet the state gave away much of that one-time surplus in permanent tax cuts, which by and large went to wealthy individuals. Now there is talk at the legislature that there should be a tax increase to the tune of half a percent in the sales tax to fund highways. I say no. The legislature knew the need was there in 2006, they had some extra money, and they chose to give most of it away to the rich. Now they want the poor, who pay the brunt of sales taxes, to pay more to finance the highways we could have started building two years ago.