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Fri, Jul 04 2008 
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Published: May 08, 2008 12:14 am    print this story   email this story     

Taxpayers must pay up, or get used to bad roadways

Oklahoma’s roads are in bad shape. That’s no surprise to anyone.

The same condition exists throughout the country. With the rise in oil prices, the cost of materials used to repair roads has gone up.

Making do with what you have isn’t working. The same amount of money buys less road repair materials than it did a year ago, which makes it harder for those charged with keeping roads in shape — on the local, county, state and national levels — to be able to do their jobs.

The big question looming over us, as we repeatedly have said, is how do we pay for the work?

In our opinion, we need a major change in attitude, a change that may be painful to accept, but one that needs to be done.

For one, our state needs to dedicate motor vehicle fees — things like vehicle license tags and other transportation fees and taxes — to roads. As it is now, those fees are diverted to other purposes.

Is that going to be painful? Sure it is. Other state government agencies have come to depend on the money from those fees. So, there would have to be a change in funding.

Secondly, we need to look at gas taxes as what they really are: user fees. If you drive, you use Oklahoma’s streets and roads; therefore, you should help pay for their upkeep and repair.

No one likes taxes, especially anything that adds to the high price of gasoline we already have to pay. But, if we all knew our gasoline tax money was going to take care of roads, it would be easier to accept. A couple of years ago, though, Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly rejected an increase in gas taxes.

The situation boils down to this: We’ve got to do something. How we have been funding road repairs isn’t working and hasn’t been working.

The alternative is to continue as we have been and get used to having bad roads.

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