Transportation-funding amendment is clear as mud

08/15/2006

Wording on the ballot wil be confusing; what it would do is constitutionally protect revenue meant for roads and transit.

Laurie Blake, Star Tribune
Last update: August 15, 2006 – 12:50 AM

Legislators did not expect that such a confusing question would ever end up on the November ballot.

But since the Legislature didn’t take action to simplify it, millions of voters will confront a 55-word sentence asking them in a roundabout way to change the state Constitution to send more money to roads and transit.

Opinion surveys suggest people like the idea. But the question, hastily added to a bill last year, has to appear exactly as legislators wrote it. The proposal is so difficult to read that supporters are spending a lot of time explaining what it means.

“Once you go over the language with people, they get it, but they worry that other people won’t get it,” said Margaret Donahoe of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance. Her group is promoting the amendment as part of a statewide “Vote Yes” campaign.

Passage of the amendment would provide $300 million more each year for roads and transit by channeling all of the tax money collected on the sale of vehicles to transportation.

Fifty-four percent of the money already goes to transportation, and legislators have the authority to use the rest for that purpose. But they want voters to put that policy into the Constitution so legislators will never again use the money to balance the budget.

Even with easy-to-read language, changing the Constitution is an uphill climb. Approval requires a majority of all those voting in the election—not just those who vote on the amendment. Over the years, 211 amendments have been put on the Minnesota ballot. Voters have approved 118.

Mary Jane Morrison, a law professor at Hamline University and an expert on the Minnesota Constitution, said the wording of the transportation funding question might make it harder to pass.

“It stands to reason the easier something is to understand, the more people will be likely to vote for it and the more incomprehensible it is, the less likely,” Morrison said.

Political games

The proposed amendment sneaked through the legislative process in the final hours of the 2005 session when legislators tacked it on to a large transportation bill that included a gas-tax increase.

Knowing that Gov. Tim Pawlenty would veto a gas-tax increase, legislators approved the bill hastily to make a political point that they disagreed with the governor.

The proposal to amend the Constitution was just one of many ways the larger bill would have raised new money for transportation. It came as a surprise to many when the constitutional question was the one element to survive Pawlenty’s veto—because governors cannot veto a proposed constitutional amendment.

As a result, a poorly worded provision that was never opened to a public hearing or discussed in detail by legislators went right on the ballot, said Rep. Mary Liz Holberg, R-Lakeville. “Kinda scary. Hopefully, people have learned their lesson.”

Holberg, who chairs the House Transportation Finance Committee, objects to the wording because it does not clearly explain how the money would be split between roads and transit.

This spring, legislators considered rewording the ballot question to simplify it. But the new language was part of a larger transportation bill that went down to defeat.

What would it do?

The strategy now for the coalition supporting the amendment is to key on what it would do.

“We are not focusing so much on the language, as on what the language is trying to accomplish,” said David Olson, chairman of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

“I say this is not a new tax, it’s an existing tax,” Olson said. “I explain that the original intent when they created the tax in 1981 was to have it go to transportation projects, and that is what we are trying to make sure happens.”

Promoting the amendment at the recent Olmsted County Fair, Richard Thomas of Ames Construction, a highway contractor, kept a copy of the ballot question in his pocket for anyone who wanted to see it. Most people weren’t interested in that detail, he said.

“We would have preferred to have better language, but the average voter could care less,” Ames said.

If the amendment passes, the Minnesota Department of Transportation would put its share toward a list of road projects waiting for funding. Metro Transit is counting on the money to expand existing bus service, build and operate the Central Corridor light-rail line, and pay operating costs for Northstar commuter rail and three new busways.

Marian Anderson, secretary of the Kiwanis Club of Faribault, said the recent Vote Yes presentation she heard at her group persuaded her to support. Yes, the language is confusing, Anderson said, but “I support anything we can do to improve our roads.”