Letter to the Editor:

Whenever taxpayer advocacy groups go on a rant about earmarks, the cases against earmarks often sounds like policy wonks in the bureaucracy complaining about benefit-cost ratios and stuff that accountants talk about. The result is that people who trust their representatives often do a default analysis which means trying to figure out if they are getting the pork or giving the pork. Deciding transportation priorities is not a natural talent that politicians have. If they did have some gift in that area, they would not have the staff or time to do it right.

A particularly good example of a bad earmark has been before the Tennessee legislature for at least two years. It is a shameless attempt to get Perry County a four lane connector road to the nearest Interstate. TDOT places the construction cost of this project at $155 million dollars over two years. Even though this is less than 5 percent of the TDOT budget for two years in a row, it amounts to about $26 per person in the state of Tennessee. The actual language of the bill does not say it is for Perry County but to qualify for this cornucopia of asphalt, the lucky county has to have a population between 7600 and 7700 people back on the year 2000. Only Perry County fits that qualification. This income transfer is particularly troubling since many of the counties that are expected to help out have worse long term economic performance.

This is an asphalt welfare program that has no mercy for the people who live in areas with lower growth rates of personal income, per capita income or population. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) relentlessly tracks economic performance of counties, cities, the state and regions of the state. From 1969 to 2005, Perry County has had a positive, but not thrilling, population growth rate except for four years. Its annualized population growth rate is better than 43 other counties over the same period. That same growth rate is mid range compared with all other counties. Its average population growth rate is better than 16 out of 35 cities throughout the state that are monitored by the BEA.

According to the same BEA records, only 10 counties in Tennessee have higher long term per capita income growth rates. This goes against intuition because Perry County is off of the Interstate and has a growth rate that is better than several counties with an Interstate going through it. The people at the bottom of the per capita growth rate rankings who live in the lowest ranking counties like Lake, Trousdale and Hickman might wonder why they need to send Perry County $26 per person. Out of 134 statistical areas in Tennessee, Perry county ranks number 89 or near the dividing line between the upper third and middle third of statistical areas in terms of rate of personal income growth between 1969 and 2005. In 2005, Perry County ranked 57 from the bottom out of 134 Tennessee statistical areas in per capita income.

This is not the most outrageous case of Tennessee transportation related earmarks. It just happens to be one of the better examples of so many people paying for the pork and so few actually getting the pork. A beauty contest has more complicated, more objective and more reasonable standards than whatever got this proposed law thrown into the legislative hopper. Senator Harmon and Representative Tidwell should come up with a better explanation for SB411 and HB4035.

Last year, TDOT built no new road miles in Tennessee. Earmarked legislation with time deadlines are an enticement to cut corners on maintenance and a first step to gathering a list of ineffective and financially disastrous transportation choices. As long as the legislature gets away with running TDOT as a charity asphalt dispenser with frivolous criteria, there will be no incentive to make better choices. Over the long haul, a guarantee of economic and transportation efficiency through objective choices will serve us better than the current informal system of pork redistribution. These same legislators will soon be calling on all Tenneesseans to step up and pay more transportation taxes but a system that produces projects like this should not be allowed to vacuum more taxpayer money.

Danny L. Newton
Cookeville, Tennessee