OPINION — Editorial

The road ahead

Build it and they will come

It's called House Bill 1726 and Arkansas' prosperity may depend on its passage. Because it envisions a statewide network of good roads that would be financed by a 20-year bond issue. It's not only a visionary proposal but a responsible one--for it would become law only if the voters agreed to pay for it by having the state extend Arkansas' 6 1/2 percent sales tax to motor fuel, whether diesel or gasoline.

Yet the bill's last vote in the Arkansas House fell short of the simple majority required to pass this forward-looking bill, receiving only 38 votes while 27 of the Honorables chose to sit this one out, apparently preferring to stay neutral between a better Arkansas and a worse one.

Why? Their reasons are best known to themselves. There will doubtless be excuses galore for this failure to take a stand for a better, growing Arkansas but it's hard to think of an acceptable reason to duck this responsibility to the future of the state short of a mass epidemic of sleeping sickness breaking out in the House and reducing so many of its members to the torpor that has overtaken our leaders too many times in this state's past. For every jarring bump in the Legislature has a way of being magnified when you're a motorist trying to get from Point A to Point B--or an investor who knows that better roads lead to higher dividends, which in turn lead to higher wages. For great expectations are the seedbed of a great future.

Someone said the bill could be the difference between improving Arkansas' roads or just managing their decline. It may still be possible to save this bill and vital reform, but momentum has been lost and might not be regained. To paraphrase a keen observer not just of politics but of life, Will Shakespeare, there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads to good fortune. But once missed, may limit their voyage to shallows and miseries. This bill in the House represented only one opportunity for a breakthrough for Arkansas, but it was a good one and deserved far more support from Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.

To quote an urgent appeal to his colleagues by the bill's sponsor, state Representative Dan Douglas of Bentonville: "I'm going to say from the well [of the House] that this is your last chance to do anything to fund highways. We need $150 million a year to maintain the highways we have, much less build anything new." And there's no denying that those who opposed this bill, or just went absent without leave, effectively voted for decline.

There will always be those in the Legislature who choose to escape their responsibility for casting a simple Yes or No vote by coming up with some fanciful alternative that they mistake for a sound policy. Johnny Rye, a state rep from Trumann, proposed to divert the taxes now collected on Internet purchases to the state's highways. Join the club, Representative Rye, because everybody and his brother, sister and assorted relations has already proposed something similar for his favorite project.

In order to solve a problem it has to be faced, not put off in favor of starry-eyed proposals that are likely to remain just that, not real money in the till. With all due respect for these many cooks determined to spoil the broth by suggesting that ever more exotic spices be added to the recipe, it would be a better policy to stick with the old blue-plate special--and remember to pay the cashier on our way out. Simpler remains better when it comes to passing taxes, fixing the state's roads for the (unforeseeable) future, and generally accounting for one's stewardship of what, after all, is other people's money.

Editorial on 03/28/2017

Upcoming Events