Wisconsin's Highway-Spending Addiction

George Mitchell brings out a few ugly facts about the Doyle/Walker highway-spending machines.

...in the last year of the Thompson-McCallum Administration debt service on highway bonds was $93 million and represented 7% of transportation fund revenue....

...By the time Doyle left office the dollar amount of debt service had more than doubled. As a share of transportation revenue it grew to 11.5% from 7%....

...Under Walker’s proposal the dollar value of debt service would have more than doubled from Doyle’s last year in office. As a share of transportation revenue, debt service would have risen to more than 20% from 11.5%....

(Walker's proposal was NOT adopted, so Gottlieb and Vos want to ram it through this year instead.)

Anyhoo.  Mitchell's analysis points out why it is that DOT has budget troubles:  they are spending 11.5% of their income on debt-service.  That's around $200 million/year, which is one helluvalot of car registration fees, no?

By the way, when Robin Vos can justify the massive DOT spend on Hy. 16 between Oconomowoc and Watertown--which has, perhaps, 500 vehicles/day traveling on it--then we'll give his RoadBuilders pals another $million or so to play with.