Talking Michigan Transportation
The Talking Michigan Transportation podcast features conversations with transportation experts inside and outside MDOT and will touch on anything and everything related to mobility, including rail, transit and the development of connected and automated vehicles.
Talking Michigan Transportation
Poll: Michiganders want taxes paid at the fuel pump to go to roads, but it’s not that simple
On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, a veteran Michigan pollster discusses a recent survey of active and likely November general election voters that shows an overwhelming number want the taxes they pay at the pump to fix roads and bridges.
Michigan is among states with a sales tax on motor fuels. That tax, 6 percent, does not go to roads and bridges. By law, the proceeds support the school aid fund, revenue sharing for local municipalities and a minor portion helps fund local transit services.
Bernie Porn, president of the polling firm EPIC-MRA, explains that shifting that sales tax to roads and bridges means other revenue would be needed to continue to fund those other services.
All survey respondents were asked, “Do you think that all of the taxes that you pay at the gas pump should or should not go toward funding improvements to Michigan’s roads and bridges?” In response, an 82-percent majority said all taxes paid at the gas pump should go toward funding Michigan roads and bridges, 13 percent said no, with 5 percent undecided.
Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I'm your host, jeff Cranston. Today I'm going to be speaking with a veteran pollster in the state of Michigan. Bernie Porn at EpicMRA recently conducted another poll looking at the issue of how we fund roads, specifically on what we pay in tax for fuel, both gasoline and diesel fuel. That's largely how roads have been funded in Michigan, in most states, for a number of years. It's a diminishing return because of the move to electric vehicles and hybrids and just because cars are getting better mileage, which is great for the environment but not so good if that's how you fund your roads. Specifically, this question looked at whether everything you pay at the pump should actually go to the roads. Most people think that's the case already, but Michigan is one of some of the states that actually charge a sales tax on gas and that sales tax doesn't go to roads. Most of it goes to schools.
Speaker 2:So Bernie talked about the poll, what his findings are and some of the history of these issues, because he's a veteran, like I said, and he knows a lot of these things. And then at the end, if you'll stay tuned, I'm resurrecting a little audio from a podcast a few years ago that paid tribute to one of the state's foremost artists recording artists, pioneers in many ways and I think this is fitting, since we're recording on the last day of Black History Month. So once again I'm with Bernie Porn, who is the principal at Epic MRA, a veteran pollster in the state of Michigan. He's been at this a long time and has experience in the legislature, so when he talks about his polling data he can talk about what happens recently in the snapshot in time, but he also brings tremendous context and perspective from somebody who's been looking at public policy in Michigan for a long time. I don't want to date you too much, bernie, but why don't you talk about how many years you've been doing this?
Speaker 3:Since trees were new.
Speaker 2:Yes, and then the dinosaurs came.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think the first poll I did was when I was in college in 1972.
Speaker 2:You were at Aquinas College with some friends of mine, as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2:Yes indeed yeah. So let's talk about the findings of this most recent poll. I think it's not surprising that people who already assumed that everything they pay at the pump was going to roads would say that it should. But, and asked that simple way in a vacuum, most people would say well, yeah, but then when you start explaining where that 6% sales tax that Michigan charges on fuel goes, you know a lot of very important things schools, cheap among them but certainly some of that goes to revenue sharing and a small sliver actually does go to transportation in terms of the comprehensive transportation fund which funds transit, for instance, doesn't necessarily go to roads and bridges, but this gets complicated in a hurry, like everything with public policy, so I don't know why you just give me, give me the top lines of your findings.
Speaker 3:Well, we asked voters do you think that all of the taxes you pay at the gas pump should or should not go toward funding improvements to Michigan's roads and bridges? 82% very high numbers said yes, all taxes paid should go toward funding Michigan roads and bridges. 13% said no, not all taxes should go toward funding roads and bridges, and 5% were undecided. We then explained to them that Michigan is one of only six states that charges the sales tax on gas and very little of the 6% sales tax collected at the pump goes to fund improvements to Michigan roads and bridges. In fact, the 6% sales tax collected at the gas pump generates about $1.1 billion per year, but only about 50 million, or less than 5%, goes to the Comprehensive Transportation Fund. That goes to roads and bridges. Just under 800 million goes to the school aid fund, just over 100 million goes to local revenue sharing and another 130 million goes to the state general fund.
Speaker 3:Would you favor or oppose legislation that would require all of the $1.1 billion in funds collected from the 6% sales tax to go toward funding improvements to roads and bridges? And that number is lower than the 82%. Obviously, 66% would favor such legislation 38% strongly and 25% would oppose it 11% strongly, with the 9% undecided. That is pretty a strong number. And when you look at the partisan breakdown of that number, on that question, 73% of conservatives, 66% of moderates and a lower 53% of liberals say they would support it. And by party, 58% of Democrats, 64% of independent voters and 75% of Republicans say that they would support having all of the 6% sales tax going to transportation. And there's a lot of other demographic breakouts that I could go over, but in a nutshell, I think the political party is probably the most important one, because that is what. If in fact, there's an attempt to push this proposal, that will be what the legislators will be looking at.
Speaker 2:You think, having done this for a long time and working with lawmakers and working with various advocacy groups on your polling, is there any way to simplify this? I mean, Prop A in 1994 was framed in a way, I think that was pretty simple for people to get their brains around. Prop 1 in 2015, while described by someone as conservative as Rob Fowler, who was then with the Small Business Association of Michigan, as a very elegant proposal had support from both sides, yet it didn't even get 20% in the November vote that year. So do you think there's a way? And I think that, and you can tell me what you think? I think, even though it did a lot and it would have solved a lot of public policy problems in Michigan, it was just too complicated, and anytime something's complicated, it makes it easy for the opposition to blow it apart. Is there any way to get this through to people?
Speaker 3:I think if you simply state that 6% sales tax is charged on tax or on gasoline at the pump and this proposal, proposal A or whatever it would be or well, actually it could be done. Could it not by just the legislature, or would it have to go on the ballot? No, I think it could. If it can be done just by the legislature, all of the proposed legislation would take all of the $1.1 billion raised from the 6% sales tax and devote it to transportation. However, I do think that legislatively, you would need to append that by saying previously a great deal went to education and also revenue sharing, and there's going to have to be some combination in terms of other sources of revenue to meet the needs of education and also revenue sharing, because I think you'll end up with some pretty powerful interests that will suggest they're not in favor of all of the money going to transportation.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, that's the problem from a public policy standpoint a long time ago, and I'm sure that this goes out in various forms in other states. But somehow we pitted roads against schools for funding and they're all part of basic infrastructure. Our education system and what we do to grow youths and grow education is same as the vital importance of how we get from A to B and how we live, work and play. Transportation is part of that. That was the beauty of, I think, proposal one in 2015. Did not harm the schools. It raised more money overall. Ultimately, it was gonna cause people more, but it was also gonna deliver a lot more. And again, it was easy to blow it apart because it was complicated. So it sounds like you're saying that you think, based on your findings, you think there could be some bipartisan support for doing this and doing it in a way that holds schools and communities that get revenue sharing harmless.
Speaker 3:Well, I think there is, and one of the things that I would love to see the legislature pursue and of course you're gonna have opposition from business and probably many Republicans and that is a graduated income tax, much like Minnesota has, if you were to take that same proposal and implanted in Michigan, with percentages going from just under 10% for people making over a million dollars and dropping it down to less than the 4% for those with the lowest income, where a vast majority of people would pay less on a graduated income tax, but it would raise, I think, between four and five billion dollars. You would then be able to provide the funding needed for education, not only holding them harmless, but providing more funding for not only education but also transportation, and I think the revenue sharing could be held harmless and possibly even an increase. And, by the way, we have tested that many times and it is supported by voters to the tune of in the neighborhood of 65%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean again, given your vast history with this and knowing that you talk to people and study issues in other states, why do you think this is so difficult in Michigan?
Speaker 3:Well, for one thing, the proposal in 2015,. That was such a hodgepodge of changes and transfers and switching this for that and so much else that I know that the media folks who are working on it, doing focus groups they had a tough time even selling it in focus groups where you could explain it and show pictures and everything else. And when we tested it in our polling, it never broke like 30% and I knew that it was gonna be beaten by even more than that. And, sure enough, in a survey we did at the time for Kalamazoo RISA, they were testing a special ed millage proposal and we tested that where 65 plus percent supported the special ed millage. And then the superintendent of K-RISA said, with this on the ballot, that the governor placed on the ballot proposal, whatever eight bay or one number one in 2015,.
Speaker 3:Can that have an impact? I said it sure can and we tested it and it showed that almost 80% were gonna vote against it, which is, in fact, what happened, and only 51% would vote for the special ed millage, which is where it ended up in K-RISA. It is a complicated issue, but I think, if you simplify it as much as possible, saying changing from a division of how the 6% is divvied up to all of it, going into transportation $1.1 billion and the other interest held harmless by getting revenue from other sources. I think that would be a good approach to try and sell it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I mean first of all, yeah, the complications of the 2015 proposal. I remember well. I did participated in a number of discussions and media events and presentations to try to explain it. Try to just explain, not advocate one way or the other, but just explain it, because people had a lot of questions and you know it might have done something just to educate people about how roads are funded in Michigan, although I still see all the time stories and various you know online associations that track things, that track taxes in various states, and it'll show Michigan among the highest for gas taxes. And that should always come with a big old asterisk, because if you don't include the sales tax, michigan's actual gas tax is more in the middle.
Speaker 2:You know people like to cite Ohio all the time. You know Ohio's gas tax is eight and a half cents higher, even after Michigan passed the proposal in 2015, and the legislature legislated to phase in a minor increase in fuel taxes. Ohio went for ten cents, so now Michigan's at about 30 and they're at 38.5 and they get $250 million a year in tolling revenue from the term pike. And you know people say, well, ohio's roads are better. Well, you know, pound for pound, they're really not. But that's the perception sometime from when you're driving and when you happen to cross the border. And maybe I-75 in Toledo happened to have been worked on last year and I-75 in Monroe County hadn't been worked on for 30 years. So you just think that their roads must be better, but they'll tell you that they have a lot of challenges too.
Speaker 2:This gets difficult because people want to look for any excuse to not pay more and legislators don't want to have to vote for that. The governor tried really diligently, you know, went across the state explaining the problem, especially with looking at crumbling bridges, and couldn't get anything moved. And so she did what she could, at least for the state trunk lines that are under her jurisdiction, by doing the bonding, which is definitely making a dent, especially in the highest traveled roads. There's not a lot that we can do at the state level for the local roads and that helps local agencies with the bridge bundling and other assistance that they can provide. But getting a comprehensive solution like you're talking about that would help. You know all local roads, city, village, county and state trunk lines. I just think it would be a huge thing for our tourism industry and for so many businesses that talk about. You know the difficulty in attracting new business.
Speaker 3:That would attract, I think, a lot of new business, and if it was part of a comprehensive business attraction plan, I think it would be well worth it. However, you cannot leave education nor revenue sharing out and take money away from them, so I think that needs to be part of the equation. In terms of finding more money, and a good approach to do that would be going to a graduated income tax as one approach. Other than that, you know you could probably raise sales tax, but you then get into, I think, more difficulty selling that to Democrats and even putting all of this money $1.1 billion of the sales tax into transportation. There is less support among Democrats than there are among independents, and certainly less than there is among Republican voters, but there may well be a greater reluctance to do that among Republican legislators than either Democrats or those that are in competitive districts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the regressive nature of the sales tax is always going to be a problem for some lawmakers, but I think you you make a good point about how this all has to be balanced. I wondered about your findings to whether we've baited dent at all in helping people to understand that the reason that Roads have been so challenged in our state for a long time aren't because Anybody's doing anything wrong. The contractors, the various road agencies that Offer the contracts and work on designing these things, follow National specs. The federal highway administration has, you know, their own policies and procedures. There's an association, the American Association of State Highway Transportation officials, that set these rules and Everybody's doing basically the same thing with the same kind of materials. It's just about how much you invest. You know Michigan has become a national leader in what's called asset management, meaning tackling the system and repairs from a scientific standpoint, using data to inform decisions, not just because they're innovative thinkers, but because they had to do something to make the money go further, because there just isn't enough of it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah what did you find about that in terms of people's perceptions of how roads are maintained?
Speaker 3:well, we have on a number of occasions a tested Perception of condition of the roads and it has. We haven't done it probably in the last year and a half or so, but it has been rather negative. I mean, at one point it was like 94 percent negative rating. But it has been improving. And Not long ago we did some testing as to whether or not people preferred black top or preferred cement and they all fairly convincingly preferred black top and, however, they thought it would not last as long. But I knew at the time that if you prepare where you're going to lay new materials for roads, that if you properly do the Setup for the for the black top, that that can work very well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting when you say black top that's you know to people in the industry, they're thinking of that as asphalt or hot mix as well called HMA.
Speaker 2:And cement is what isn't in concrete, so it's usually thought of and you know, I Probably have been at this long enough now that I know some of these things that I didn't used to know as a journalist. But yeah, the concrete versus asphalt debate is a heavy one and it's a. It's an important competition in order to keep prices down, that we need all the industries to be healthy. Do you get any sense of why people said that? That they think that as fault or black top is is better than concrete?
Speaker 3:I think I think a lot of it has to do with not understanding what what are state and what are local roads that they, a lot of communities, have not done all that well in terms of Maining, maintaining local roads. And if there is an area where that is occurring and most of your driving is on the local roads and not that much on state roads, you tend to view the pavements negatively, and then so I think that that's a big part of the equation, how it is perceived, because a lot of people don't think well, this is a local road and it's not as well Built as as a state road that I Go on maybe a couple times a week.
Speaker 2:That's interesting too, because you said I think part of that even even if they thought one lasted longer than the other, they, in other words, you know you get more bang for your buck they still feel like One is better in the short term, in terms of just their driving experience. Is that basically what you found?
Speaker 3:Yeah, people thought that blacktop or asphalt was was smoother riding, it was better and in bad weather, whereas cement was more Lasting in terms of road construction, but they didn't like driving on it as much.
Speaker 2:We'll be right back, stay tuned.
Speaker 4:The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you that when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, person or other object, it is a crash, not an accident. By reducing human error, we can prevent crashes and rebuild Michigan roads safely.
Speaker 2:Boy, peter Taylor, who is a PhD that heads up National Concrete Institute at Iowa State University, and somebody I've talked to frequently about these issues, would definitely beg to differ and would talk a great deal about. You know really well made concrete and how long it can last and how. You know how resilient it can be. So this is, this is a debate that will probably never be settled, that's for sure. Well, bringing this, this back home, are you optimistic at all, knowing that we still have very divided government, very, very close in both the house and the Senate, the Democrats have control, actually it's, it's tied now in the house. Do you have any faith that that something could happen over these? Well, really, in this year, I guess, perhaps in lame duck? What's your? I don't know. If you had to bet, what would you say?
Speaker 3:I would probably say that it is unlikely, because there are other issues that may well be more critical to deal with the than transportation. Plus, I think there's a an awareness that there is federal funding that is available or still coming in, I think over the next what? Five years? Four years, five years in terms of funding for transportation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the I I J a infrastructure investment and jobs act.
Speaker 3:And that is that somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven billion dollars, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for Michigan it's definitely helping, especially at the at the local level. A lot of that money was reauthorization. Reauthorization happened every few years under different acronyms. It's all helpful, but it would certainly be setting false expectations to think that at all was enough money to solve. You know Michigan's problems, which are decades in the making.
Speaker 3:No, it's. It's enormous in terms of the need to provide funding for road construction, but I really think that a part of the that it has to be enough so that the local roads can be a part of the solution, because you will continue to have that negative perception If most people are driving on local roads and not all communities are maintaining them as well as they can. And we have tested local roads, perception of local roads and a lot of communities and and they will vary from 90% negative to 70% positive in some communities and we have in some communities, had had it as high as 70%. One was my hometown and flushing. We're a few years ago or we, where we did a survey.
Speaker 2:Well and, as you know, in this most recent election this this on primary day there were a handful of local roads issues on the ballot across the state and most of them did did well, and I think you know the city of Grand Rapids in 2014 overwhelmingly passed an income tax for streets and the the leaders at the time on the city of Grand Rapids were very aggressive about getting that money on the street. You know so a lot of that work was going on right away so people could see it. I think it would probably pass again, because people get it when you can actually see the work going on, and I think that's the case with the rebuilding Michigan bonding program and the amount of work that's been going on the last few years. I mean you can't have it both ways right. You can't complain that the roads are crumbling and then complain because they're fixing too many.
Speaker 3:So that's a balance to yeah, and people will complain because they take longer to get to work for a few months because there's a one lane on a particular highway, which is about to take place, I think on a portion near Lansing on 96. So that kind of perception is always going to be there, where people complain about having only one lane to drive on on a highway but at some point it ends and then all of a sudden they have a wonderful payment to drive on.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah well, bernie, thank you. As always, I really appreciate your insights and appreciate what you do to help various organizations and policymakers understand what the citizens are thinking, and you know what they want. So we'll have to talk again sometime.
Speaker 3:Love to do it anytime, jeff.
Speaker 2:Thank you again for listening to this week's episode. I hope you were also able to listen to last week's conversation with Lisa Thompson, who is the director of the Michigan Department of Transportation's Office of Business Development, which comprises many things, including the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program. She had some some really good things to say about what that program is doing to provide opportunities for all and her personal history and why she's doing it, and with that, since this is the final day of Black History Month in 2024. I wanted to close with a reprise of an audio clip from a podcast from a few years ago, when there was an event to celebrate dedicating a segment of the Lodge Freeway in Detroit as the Aretha Franklin Memorial Highway. Aretha Franklin's granddaughters were on hand and I wanted to use this opportunity again to hear their their soaring voices.
Speaker 1:Aretha Franklin's granddaughters were on hand and I wanted to use this opportunity again to hear their soaring voices. Aretha Franklin's granddaughters were on hand and I wanted to use this opportunity again to hear their soaring voices. A single song full of the hope that the present has brought us, Facing the rising sun of our new day begun. Let us march on till victory is won.