5 ms·

Pa. fuel tax meant for bridge repair went to state police instead (2019)

35 points by ensan 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
exhilaration 5y ago
Just to explain the last three paragraphs of that article, what happens in town after town is that the anti-tax folks decide that there's no need to fund a local police department when the PA State Police is obligated to take over policing. There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service and their state reps fight any effort to put one in place. So year after year the State Police's budget grows out of control and infrastructure funds and fuel taxes are an easy way to cover the costs.
- tormeh 5y ago
  Every day I edge closer to the conclusion that local democracy and public participation is a net negative.
  - arcbyte 5y ago
    The more we insulate people from the repercussions of their actions the more we get perverse behavior. Let the towns go unpoliced. Either everything will be fine or they'll quickly refund thr police like every other city that tried that is doing.
  - yuppie_scum 5y ago
    Boy do I have a great country for you to consider
    - tormeh 5y ago
      So only one level of democracy?
  - cguess 5y ago
    The loss of local journalism is definitely a contributing factor to this. Politicians are much more willing get away with stuff if they know there's not a reporter in the back of the city council meeting taking notes.
    - vba616 5y ago
      The local newspaper in my city that's been there all my life is still there, and a few months ago, I was disgusted with the national media and thought, well, I'll get a digital subscription to support local journalism. But (and this has been my experience with other subscriptions too) I still had trouble accessing what I wanted to read. I expected the paywall would go away, but it's not that simple. I'm pretty sure that this was because they have some sort of tiered system, but I felt cheated regardless of how it might be rationalized. Bait & switch. So I cancelled.
- coolso 5y ago
  As a PA resident, it’s interesting how other large states are able to get by just fine with fewer taxes than PA takes out of our paychecks (and adds to our receipts). Call it less of an anti tax issue, and more of a “the state needs to reign in its spending” issue.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service That's a poor excuse. The state police were underfunded and so they stole money from the bridge fund. They could have raised state income taxes or simply said "no" to the increased funding. Instead, because they couldn't charge people in Small town X for their police force, they charged the citizens of Pittsburg by giving them worse bridges than they paid for - to help small town X.
- compsciphd 5y ago
  i'm unsure if its not a good thing to encourage local towns not to have their own police, but be policed by the state. we see many towns that basically have unprofessional police forces that are turned into revenue generation vehicles for the town. However, if one want to have the more professional state police take on more of a role, it does have to be funded and fighting against the funding is problematic.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tedunangst 5y ago
I think the headline sounds like the police took all the money, but that's not quite the case. > The department’s overall budget is $10.2 billion, and it allocates $2.5 billion to construction projects annually. Richards said, last year, $802 million went to state police. And regular reminder that dollars are fungible, and despite theoretical earmarks, it's really hard to say that this dollar was supposed to pay for that. If the budget didn't work, they'd just push it around in other ways. But still, fixing bridges before collapsing would be nice.
- vba616 5y ago
  The article I read about the bridge collapse says they have no idea why it did so. "Tax and spend" sounds fine to me, but spending can't substitute for figuring out what needs to be funded! If the bridge seemed fine, then first it needs to be determined just how anybody should've known it wasn't. Ignoring this is exactly the sort of thing that hardens people into thinking taxes are always wasted.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    The bridge was listed as in "poor" (the worst of 3 possible conditions) and in need of immediate structural repair since 2011. There are pictures of rusted-through members, like this one[1] from 2018 where a diagonal member has been replaced with a cable and some prayer that it doesn't end up in compression. Google Street view shows the west side missing lower diagonal bracing[2] compared to the east side. The bridge was scheduled for fracture-critical and special inspections every 12 months. All 4 steel columns were at condition state 4 (poor condition, higher numbers are better condition).[3] We know why it collapsed, in general terms: it wasn't repaired for years. We don't know the exact trigger, there are so many bits that could have broken first it's hard to tell. It's quite possible the snow load, bus, and other vehicles were simply enough to overload it, since it had been derated from 67.5 tons down to 33 tons (26 tons on the sign in street view though). Those articulated buses used by PA DOT range from 19.5 to 22.5 tons curb weight, so the bus + snow load + 4 (or maybe more) other vehicles could easily have exceeded 26 tons. [1] https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/v1643378499/tips/Dvj4NduWsAAdPmz_pf1urs.jpg https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/v164... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4392955,-79.9003455,3a,75y,330.81h,91.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipNHCy38zMhWSfrsfV9dkK9KrHGVcWitENDOZQ3b!2e10!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4392955,-79.9003455,3a,75y,3... [3] https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data/BridgeDetail/22435238#!#NBETab https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data/BridgeDetail/22435238#!...

35 points by ensan 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Just to explain the last three paragraphs of that article, what happens in town after town is that the anti-tax folks decide that there's no need to fund a local police department when the PA State Police is obligated to take over policing. There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service and their state reps fight any effort to put one in place. So year after year the State Police's budget grows out of control and infrastructure funds and fuel taxes are an easy way to cover the costs.

tormeh 5y ago
Every day I edge closer to the conclusion that local democracy and public participation is a net negative.
- arcbyte 5y ago
  The more we insulate people from the repercussions of their actions the more we get perverse behavior. Let the towns go unpoliced. Either everything will be fine or they'll quickly refund thr police like every other city that tried that is doing.
- yuppie_scum 5y ago
  Boy do I have a great country for you to consider
  - tormeh 5y ago
    So only one level of democracy?
- cguess 5y ago
  The loss of local journalism is definitely a contributing factor to this. Politicians are much more willing get away with stuff if they know there's not a reporter in the back of the city council meeting taking notes.
  - vba616 5y ago
    The local newspaper in my city that's been there all my life is still there, and a few months ago, I was disgusted with the national media and thought, well, I'll get a digital subscription to support local journalism. But (and this has been my experience with other subscriptions too) I still had trouble accessing what I wanted to read. I expected the paywall would go away, but it's not that simple. I'm pretty sure that this was because they have some sort of tiered system, but I felt cheated regardless of how it might be rationalized. Bait & switch. So I cancelled.
coolso 5y ago
As a PA resident, it’s interesting how other large states are able to get by just fine with fewer taxes than PA takes out of our paychecks (and adds to our receipts). Call it less of an anti tax issue, and more of a “the state needs to reign in its spending” issue.
HWR_14 5y ago
> There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service That's a poor excuse. The state police were underfunded and so they stole money from the bridge fund. They could have raised state income taxes or simply said "no" to the increased funding. Instead, because they couldn't charge people in Small town X for their police force, they charged the citizens of Pittsburg by giving them worse bridges than they paid for - to help small town X.
compsciphd 5y ago
i'm unsure if its not a good thing to encourage local towns not to have their own police, but be policed by the state. we see many towns that basically have unprofessional police forces that are turned into revenue generation vehicles for the town. However, if one want to have the more professional state police take on more of a role, it does have to be funded and fighting against the funding is problematic.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tedunangst 5y ago

I think the headline sounds like the police took all the money, but that's not quite the case. > The department’s overall budget is $10.2 billion, and it allocates $2.5 billion to construction projects annually. Richards said, last year, $802 million went to state police. And regular reminder that dollars are fungible, and despite theoretical earmarks, it's really hard to say that this dollar was supposed to pay for that. If the budget didn't work, they'd just push it around in other ways. But still, fixing bridges before collapsing would be nice.

vba616 5y ago
The article I read about the bridge collapse says they have no idea why it did so. "Tax and spend" sounds fine to me, but spending can't substitute for figuring out what needs to be funded! If the bridge seemed fine, then first it needs to be determined just how anybody should've known it wasn't. Ignoring this is exactly the sort of thing that hardens people into thinking taxes are always wasted.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  The bridge was listed as in "poor" (the worst of 3 possible conditions) and in need of immediate structural repair since 2011. There are pictures of rusted-through members, like this one[1] from 2018 where a diagonal member has been replaced with a cable and some prayer that it doesn't end up in compression. Google Street view shows the west side missing lower diagonal bracing[2] compared to the east side. The bridge was scheduled for fracture-critical and special inspections every 12 months. All 4 steel columns were at condition state 4 (poor condition, higher numbers are better condition).[3] We know why it collapsed, in general terms: it wasn't repaired for years. We don't know the exact trigger, there are so many bits that could have broken first it's hard to tell. It's quite possible the snow load, bus, and other vehicles were simply enough to overload it, since it had been derated from 67.5 tons down to 33 tons (26 tons on the sign in street view though). Those articulated buses used by PA DOT range from 19.5 to 22.5 tons curb weight, so the bus + snow load + 4 (or maybe more) other vehicles could easily have exceeded 26 tons. [1] https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/v1643378499/tips/Dvj4NduWsAAdPmz_pf1urs.jpg https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/v164... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4392955,-79.9003455,3a,75y,330.81h,91.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipNHCy38zMhWSfrsfV9dkK9KrHGVcWitENDOZQ3b!2e10!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4392955,-79.9003455,3a,75y,3... [3] https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data/BridgeDetail/22435238#!#NBETab https://infobridge.fhwa.dot.gov/Data/BridgeDetail/22435238#!...