Taking money from schools to build roads is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.

Oregon, and probably the US as a whole, is now going to try a grand experiment: whether cutting funding from education while building roads and bridges can be the path to our economic future. Seems crazy to me. Absolute folly. Raving mad!

As for roads, the Daily Journal of Commerce in Sam Bennett’s article “State preparing for federal stimulus money" reports (here):

Once President Obama signs the federal economic stimulus package into law, the Oregon Department of Transportation will be ready to spring into action.

Travis Brouwer, federal affairs advisor for ODOT, said the package will provide about $350 million in federal dollars for Oregon road and bridge projects. Nationwide, the bill will allocate approximately $30 billion for transportation infrastructure projects….

…. “We have many projects sitting on the shelf,” said Brouwer. “For a lot of the projects, we saw the potential of the stimulus coming, and in December we allocated $2 million on engineering for these projects.” He said the Oregon Transportation Commission approved the $2 million.

Many of the projects that will use federal stimulus funding are ones that had been mostly designed. “They required a minimum amount of design” in the last couple months, Brouwer said. “To a significant degree, we took projects that were already going to be constructed and added the stimulus money.”

Meanwhile, schools are struggling to find money to stay open this year. Betsy Hammond’s Oregonian article “School supporters: Raid the state saving account to keep schools open” reports (here):

Supporters of schools, universities and Head Start programs urged lawmakers Thursday to spare those programs from steep budget cuts this spring, pointing out that education is an economic engine for the state.

Education, from preschool through grad school, provides jobs for those who work in the field while helping spawn a better-educated future workforce, its champions testified.

Advocates for higher education and Head Start offered no suggestions about where lawmakers should find the millions to keep their programs afloat, given that state income tax collections have tanked $800 million below what the state expected for the current budget.

But advocates for public schools had a unified message: Raid the state's education stability fund, and fast, to keep schools open for a full school year through this June.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski has said he doesn't want to take money from that fund, which contains about $390 million, to patch the current budget because he fears the money will be needed more badly in 2009-2011 as the recession persists.

But public school leaders pleaded with lawmakers to take the risk and spend much of the savings now. Planning ahead for two lean school years to come would be better than trying to hack back school spending two-thirds of the way through this school year, they said.

So, given the dynamics of the declining economy and the proposed stimulus package, a shift in funding is taking place: from education to roads and bridges (and other things). If the federal stimulus does not fill the revenue holes in Oregon’s educational budget, (and given the complexities of and lack of information on the stimulus proposal, no one seems to know for sure), this is folly. Could not our schools better use the $350 million now going for Oregon roads, and going for roads we were going to build anyway? Taking money from education to build roads is absolutely crazy!

Further, for national security, environmental protection and economic development purposes, we need to reduce our imports of foreign oil. The best way to do this is with a gas tax, a really significant one (although, for these purposes, I’d make it revenue neutral). However, the reason we have a backlog in needed road and bridge infrastructure projects is because the American, and Oregon, public have not wanted to increase the gas tax to pay for them. In this stimulus bill, we are going to depart from the tradition of user fees (gas taxes) to pay for highway and bridges,and reward their/our reluctance. And we are doing it at the expense of education. Absolute folly! High order madness!