Editorial: Business should lead on transportation

It isn't just Minnesota's politicians who are having trouble coming to grips with the state's gaping deficit in transportation funding. On this score, it appears, they represent their business constituents.

The annual Business Barometer Survey by the state Chamber of Commerce and Himle Horner Inc., a Bloomington public affairs firm, finds widespread agreement that the state should spend more on transportation. Further, there's broad acknowledgment that both highways and transit need improvement.

But, like legislators and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, the 350 business owners polled in the survey to be released today appear conflicted over how to pay for better transportation.

An obvious source for highway and bridge spending is the gas tax -- a "user fee" that is constitutionally dedicated for that purpose. Yet only a third of those surveyed favor a nickel increase in the state's current 20-cent-per-gallon tax, and fewer than one in five would go along with a 10-cent increase.

Perhaps they don't realize that the state is running more than a $500 million per year shortfall just in maintenance of the existing transportation network -- and a 10-cent gas tax increase would go only 60 percent of the way toward closing it. That gap convinced the state chamber to endorse a 5-cent gas tax increase three years ago.

The survey found better than 50 percent support for funding transit with a half-cent sales-tax boost in the metro area. But that's an idea that prominent retail businesses and the state chamber oppose.

This much dispute within the business community helps explain Minnesota's persistent political stalemate on transportation funding. Business has a knack for getting its way at the Capitol -- when it knows its way. On this issue, the business message is mixed.

Business owners who feel the economic crimp that inadequate mobility causes have some work to do among their peers. They need to come to terms with the magnitude of the state's transportation problem and build consensus around a remedy big enough to produce real improvement.

The business community provided important leadership last year in promoting the dedication of the motor vehicle sales tax to transportation. Its leadership is needed again.