LANSING – Refusing to take action to boost funding for the state’s roads and bridges costs each Michigan resident $286 a year in a “congestion tax” and will reduce the number of jobs in the state by some 12,000, supporters of increased funding said Wednesday.

Doubling the state’s current fuel and registration taxes would essentially cost the same for state individuals, but would result in a net increase of 15,000 jobs, the group said.

At a media roundtable held by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Pat Anderson of the Anderson Economic Group unveiled a study conducted on the impact of transportation on the major sectors of the state’s economy – manufacturing, tourism and agriculture – and said taking “bold action” on the line of doubling the state’s fuel and registration taxes would reap benefits that far outweigh the cost to residents and businesses of the increased taxes.

The officials present said they would not give up on the issue, so critical is it to the state’s economic future.

The roundtable was called in part to urge lawmakers to take action on boosting funding for the state’s roads and bridges, said Richard Studley, president of the chamber. Joined by former Senate Majority Leader Ken Sikkema, Department of Transportation spokesperson Bill Shreck, as well as Anderson and AEG researcher Alex Rosaen, Studley expressed worries both that the Legislature had done nothing to modernize the state’s transportation system and faced the possibility of not having enough state funds to meet the federal match.

Should the latter happen it would be the first time in history the state failed to meet the federal match, Shreck said. While both the House and Senate versions of the transportation budget call for ways to cobble together funds to meet that match, Shreck said the Senate version, which calls for using maintenance money, means the state would be forced to cut back on such routine functions as snowplowing.

Sikkema, who voted for the last fuel tax increase in 1997 when he was Republican leader in the House (and which set the rate at the current 19-cent gasoline tax and 15-cent diesel tax), said lawmakers had to recognize that the “economic value just in terms of jobs alone is significant.”

And the estimate that doubling the taxes would generate 15,000 net jobs is a conservative estimate of actual job growth, Sikkema said.

The tax proposals are essentially those proposed in 2008 as part of the bipartisan, bicameral transportation funding commission, said Studley, who expressed dismay that so not one of the proposals made by the commission have been passed by the Legislature.

While the chamber has been opposed to overall general tax increases and overall increased state spending, the strategy of investing in the state to boost its economy requires the state to spend more money on things like higher education and transportation, while spending less on items like social services, he said.

And Mr. Anderson said the 15,000 jobs generated for the state would be a net increase. The study assumes that increasing the taxes would mean a loss of some 18,000 jobs because state residents will have less money to spend on other items, along with the loss of another 7,000 jobs due to lowered spending coming from outside the state. But the increased spending on infrastructure alone would add nearly 36,000 jobs alone while another 6,100 jobs would be created by spending in other areas.

As it is now, Anderson said, each person in the state pays an estimated $287 a year to cover the costs road congestion and lack of repair create. While boosting the taxes would result in roughly the same cost, there would also be the offsetting economic increase.

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