Gov. Deval L. Patrick's transportation leaders will be in Springfield on Thursday to launch a series of statewide meetings to field ideas about ways to improve and finance roads, bridges and other transportation systems. Richard A. Davey, secretary and CEO of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, is expected to oversee a public meeting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m....
Gov. Deval L. Patrick's transportation leaders will be in Springfield on Thursday to launch a series of statewide meetings to field ideas about ways to improve and finance roads, bridges and other transportation systems.
Richard A. Davey, secretary and CEO of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, is expected to oversee a public meeting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Scibelli Hall Theater at Springfield Technical Community College, a spokeswoman for the department said. State officials are currently facing a massive shortfall in transportation funding.
Richard A. Davey, secretary of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, is expected to be in Springfield on Thursday as part of an effort to find ways to finance transportation improvements.
Under a state law approved by Patrick at the end of June, the seven-member board of the transportation department must publish a long-term transportation financing plan including recommendations on possible changes to state law to raise revenues for transportation.
Representatives from each division of the department – the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Highway, Aeronautics and MBTA, rail and transit – will be available at the meeting to answer questions and provide information.
The meeting comes more than three years after state legislators rejected Patrick's bill to raise the state's 23.5-cents per gallon gas tax to 42.5 cents, largely for transportation improvements.
The motor fuel portion of the gas tax was last increased in 1991. A total of 21 cents of the gas tax is on motor fuel, while an additional 2.5 cents, imposed in 2003, goes for a program for cleaning leaks from underground storage tanks, according to a report by the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission.
Davey and other officials are currently proposing no specific ways to finance transportation improvements, said a spokeswoman, Sara Lavoie.
"There's nothing on the table," Lavoie said. "There's nothing off the table. All options are open."
Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the state still is facing a shortfall of about $15 to $19 billion over the next 20 years in the costs just to maintain current systems.
Widmer was a member of the transportation finance commission, which in 2007 recommended that the gas tax should be increased by 11.5 cents and indexed to inflation. The commission identified the funding gap and issued recommendations on ways to pay for improvements to the state's aging transportation system.
The gas tax is an important revenue source for transportation, Widmer said. "If you are going to raise additional revenues, it's difficult to do that without raising the gas tax," he said.
The state raises about $700 million a year from the gas tax and uses the money for transportation purposes.
The meeting in Springfield will be the first of 15 planned around the state. Lavoie said state officials will be having "an informal conversation" and asking people what they want to see from transportation in the coming years.
At least six meetings were mandated by a law signed by Patrick at the end of June.
Another meeting is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Campus Center, Room 168C, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
The requirement for the meetings was included in a law that in part transferred $49 million to the MBTA, the public transit system in Boston and the metropolitan area, to help the agency eliminate a budget deficit. The $49 million came from a state fund made up of surplus automobile inspection fees paid by motorists. Regional transit authorities received $3.5 million in the same law.