Editorial: No denying cost of roads

Sunday, June 11, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.

How does Nevada build vitally needed roads when its budget is short by billions of dollars?

Gov. Kenny Guinn, needing help with this question, appointed a task force last year. Its 17 members were asked to review projects that the state Transportation Board strongly recommends be completed or under way by 2015. They were also asked to find ways to fund the projects that they agreed were necessary.

What the 17 panelists have found so far is that all of the state Transportation Department's recommended projects will be necessary if Nevada, and the Las Vegas Valley in particular, is to bear up under its continuous growth. Without the projects, commuters, tourists and businesses that depend on deliveries will suffer debilitating delays.

The panel, whose president is Phillip Peckman, an executive in the chairman's office of the Greenspun Corp., which owns the Las Vegas Sun, also concurred about the budget shortfall. Calculations show that state and federal revenues dedicated to road-construction projects will amount to $9.2 billion between 2008 and 2015. The projects that need to be finished or under way by then, however, will cost $13 billion.

The panel's members are working on a plan for bridging that $3.8 billion gap.

The plan, which the task force is scheduled to release before the Aug. 15 primary elections, will of necessity call for tax increases. For the full gap to be met, plus interest on borrowed money, between $270 million and $300 million in extra tax revenue would have to be realized each year for more than 20 years.

This amount could be diminished somewhat if the state uses a portion of its current surplus to help pay for the projects, or if some projects are scaled back, or if more federal funds can be added to the mix.

The reality, however, is that tax increases will be necessary if gridlock on state roads is to be avoided in the near future. The 2007 Nevada Legislature must confront this reality, and not waste time denying the inevitable.