Daily Chronicle | Transportation group says road fund being raided

SPRINGFIELD ? Taxes on gasoline and license-plate fees are among ways Illinois raises nearly $3 billion a year for road construction and repair. But transit advocates say too little of it is paying for concrete and steamrollers.

The Transportation for Illinois Coalition says there would be more ?Road Work Ahead? signs on state highways if the road fund wouldn?t finance $176 million for employee health insurance and $41 million for workers? compensation coverage in the budget year that begins July 1. Another $35 million from the account is slated to for another state agency for maintaining Illinois Department of Transportation buildings.

The coalition?s quest: to reduce ?diversions? from the road fund by $100 million, which the group says would result in an additional $500 million ? and 14,000 additional jobs ? over the next five years to keep up with deteriorating pavement.

The plan is getting noticed.

?Road-fund money should be used for construction projects, not for day-to-day operational expenses,? said Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill.

The Department of Transportation emphasizes it has limited diversions and already made a concession. While an IDOT document from March given to The Associated Press indicates the agency planned to pull $41.4 million out of the fund for workers? compensation, Gov. Pat Quinn?s budget office now says the proposed number is $21 million.

And the administration has used the criticism of road-fund diversions to push Quinn?s plans for overhauling the underfunded state pension system to save money in a budget crisis.

In its annual announcement last month of a multiyear construction program, IDOT said it planned $1.75 billion in projects next year, a 40 percent drop from what went into building and repairing roads and bridges this year.

That got the coalition?s attention, and when members of the group investigated, they learned that no road-fund money is set aside for state highway work next year. IDOT later responded that there?s $350 million in road-fund dollars for local construction projects, just not state highways.

?That?s what really got us trying to peel the onion back,? said coalition member David Kennedy, executive director of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois.

Kennedy said the $500 million would not only fund 14,000 jobs, it would reverse a trend in which by 2017, at current funding levels, one of every four miles of state roads would be in ?unacceptable? condition. Such road conditions drive business away from the state, he said.

The coalition wants state officials to spare $100 million in road-fund money by targeting the payouts for health insurance, workers? compensation, building maintenance and other services from a sister agency, the Department of Central Management Services.

The road fund, fueled primarily by a 19-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax and vehicle registration fees, does pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in bond debts for previous construction projects and subsidizes the people who build them.

The account came under close scrutiny a decade ago when former Gov. Rod Blagojevich regularly dipped into it for general operating expenses ? as much as $783 million in 2004, according to data compiled by coalition member Linda Wheeler, a retired IDOT administrator.

Diversions still totaled at least $499 million in the 2011 budget year, her data shows.

But the number dropped after 2009, when as part of a $30 billion capital construction program, the administration agreed to quit paying salaries for secretary of state, local police and Illinois State Police officers that totaled as much as $250 million.

?When that money was moved out of the road fund, we thought that was going to obviously free up some money,? said Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville. ?The secretary of state and state police, the salaries got moved out. What didn?t get moved out was health insurance and workers? comp.?

Kelly Kraft, Quinn?s budget spokeswoman, acknowledged that while $121 million of road-fund money will cover insurance for IDOT?s approximately 5,300 employees, $55 million will subsidize health care for other agencies.

But she said the workers? compensation payment would be $21 million for IDOT employee liability, not $41 million as proposed.

Legislators such as Sullivan recognize that it?s easy to talk about ending road-fund raids, but harder to find replacement revenue.

?There?s been additional pressures put on the road fund simply because of the budget,? Sullivan said. ?If you stop those diversions, that creates a hole somewhere else and you have to try to fill that.?

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