Pol tax: Let’s put a toll on claiming credit for federal funds

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was in town yesterday for another round of backslapping and agreement-inking to announce once again that the feds are sending $133 million to Minnesota for roads and transit, including new toll lanes on I-35W. According to the Political Animal’s tally, it’s at least the fifth time politicians have flashed the same cash, by either press conference or press release.

With that much demand for a scarce resource (public attention and gratitude), the principle of congestion pricing suggests a modest market solution: Impose a toll on elected officials who want to take credit for bringing home this bacon. After all, congestion-pricing, also called value pricing, is the guiding philosophy — in fact, the required philosophy — behind the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Urban Partners program. Congestion pricing is a remarkably flexible theory that can be applied in many situations: Coke even tried a vending machine that automatically raised the cost of a can on hot days. Federal ideologues made it a condition for urban areas seeking almost $1 billion in transportation funds that traditionally went to hundreds of cities big and small. This time only five cities that most enthusiastically embraced congestion pricing got money (New York City lost its bacon when the State Assembly failed to allow a toll on cars entering Manhattan).

But congestion pricing holds appeal across the political spectrum: President Bush’s DOT appointees applaud the invisible hand of the marketplace breaking up jams on the nation’s highways, while Minnesota officials of all stripes cheer the expansion of the MnPASS toll-lane system from I-394 to I-35W. So the same bipartisan crowd will support expanding it further to the congested field of political credit-grabbing. Impose a reasonable fee for repeat trips to the microphones or the fax machines. Call it MicPASS or the Fax Tax. Whoever gets it through the Legislature gets first dibs at the mic stand; everyone else pays.