Editorial: Drive right over ‘Safe Roads Amendment’ boondoggle

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Earlier this year, powerful lobbyists passing themselves off as ordinary “citizens” finagled onto the Tuesday ballot a proposal to lock in state funding for road and bridge repairs because, golly, you wouldn’t want to wreck your car driving over a big pothole, would you?

Now, in the last couple of weeks, the same selfless “citizens” have sweetened their argument for this proposed change to the Illinois Constitution. It would, they say, “fix our roads without raising taxes.”

It’s all a bunch of nonsense. That’s our take-away from reading a report in Monday’s Sun-Times that reveals down to the last dollar who’s really behind this proposal. And it’s all you need to know before you vote. Shoot this measure down.

The so-called “Safe Roads Amendment” is not about sparing you from potholes. It is about keeping the money spigot flowing for big road-building companies, and it is about locking in jobs for big trade unions. It will make it only more difficult for the state to pay its bills overall, and it will not save you from higher taxes.

The amendment would require that state revenue from transportation-related sources, such as the tax on gasoline, be spent only on transportation projects, such as building bridges and repairing roads. It would prohibit the state Legislature or the governor from spending a penny of the funds on any other priority, such as schools or social services.

We criticized the “Safe Roads Amendment” as an indefensible gift to the construction industry a month ago when we first urged a vote against it. But Monday’s story by Sun-Times reporters Lynn Sweet and Rosalind Rossi reveals what a complete boondoggle it really is.

Pushing the proposal — getting it on the ballot and now running TV ads in support of it — has been the “Citizens to Protect Transportation Funding” committee, which sounds pretty grassroots, huh? In reality, the committee is wholly funded by trade unions and major business groups.

The Illinois Chamber of Commerce has poured money into the cause, as has the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association. Much of the $4 million raised has come from “dark money” groups that do not have to identify who they are. And the unions are throwing in plenty of cash.

The biggest union contribution to “Citizens to Protect,” the Sun-Times reports, was $1 million from the “Fight Back Fund,” identified by the Illinois State Board of Elections only as an entity with a La Grange post office box. In fact, the Fight Back Fund is connected to the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 based in Countryside. The union’s members operate heavy construction equipment.

What annoys the trade unions and road construction companies is that the state Legislature and governor — as well as past governors — routinely use transportation revenue to cover non-transportation expense. In fiscal 2015, for example, some $350 million in transportation revenue was diverted to other purposes.

That has, in fact, been the practice for years, but we’re not as annoyed by it. Not when Illinois government is woefully short on revenue, faced with a long line of creditors and trying to balance competing needs. We can’t see the logic of stashing every dollar in gas taxes, for instance, in a lockbox when the state can’t pay its bills to, say, an agency that cares for the mentally disabled. Why must repaving a road come first?

Consider your own household budget. Would you put money in a lockbox to pay the cable TV bill even if that meant you might not have enough money left to pay the rent?

In a new TV ad, Citizens to Protect contend the lockbox amendment would allow the state to fix roads without raising taxes, but two watchdog groups — Reboot Illinois and Politifact Illinois — teamed up this week to evaluate that claim and were not persuaded. Essentially, they concluded, infrastructure maintenance needs are so great in Illinois that a tax hike would be likely in any event; and even if transportation revenue could not be diverted to pay other bills, the state still must pay those bills— so get ready for a tax hike somewhere.

The Safe Roads Amendment is nothing more than a Road Construction Industry Full Employment Amendment.

How nice for them, if not for you. Vote this boondoggle down.

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