Haslam Compares Tennessee’s Cautious Road Funding To Passing On A Family Farm

Tennessee’s top financial officials met with bond rating agencies this week. They showed off a growing budget surplus and record-low borrowing in an effort to maintain the state’s top-rated status of AAA.

But the state’s enviable financial position may add some complexity to a looming debate over how to fund a growing backlog of road projects.

After more than a year of talk, Gov. Bill Haslam is expected to come out with a plan in the next few months. And while the state’s AAA rating means it can borrow at the lowest-possible rates, he says you can bet the long-awaited funding proposal won’t involve breaking with state tradition and borrowing the money.

“I just feel really strongly about that,” Haslam said Thursday.

He’s already come up with a folksy metaphor to make his case: The state’s highways are like a family farm that was paid off long ago and passed down through the generations. You don’t want to be the one to borrow against it.

“That farm analogy works,” Haslam said. “We can’t pass on something to our kids that has debt on it that didn’t have debt on it when we got it.”

Going a step further, Haslam said the state also can’t pass on something that “doesn’t work” and has fallen into disrepair.

“Like ok, well it doesn’t have any debt, but the roof in the barn leaks and the corral needs fencing in 15 places, and the pond won’t hold water. We can’t do that either,” he said.

Haslam has been dropping hints that it’s time to raise the gas tax — which hasn’t changed in nearly three decades. But he knows that will take some convincing. The administration backed away from pushing a gas tax hike this year for fear that there was no appetite for it in the legislature.

For anyone eyeing the budget savings state officials have been bragging about, Haslam argues that “a one-term surplus,” even at nearly a billion dollars, won’t be enough in the long run. The current 10-year backlog is estimated to need north of $7 billion.