By Frank Keegan
False balancing of state and municipal budgets on crumbling bridges is one government accounting trick that actually kills.
When leaders balance budgets on crumbling bridges, deception starts looking more like criminal negligence than mere official dereliction of duty.
And it’s not just bridges state and municipal leaders let decay.
Dams, drinking water and sewerage systems, hazardous waste facilities, levees, roads, schools and public transit are among the essential ligatures of social order they neglect in denying fiscal reality.
Their delusions will crash soon, in some cases literally, because reality – like gravity – always wins.
Take bridges. “Gravity always wins,” according to construction lawyer Barry LePatner. “There are today 7,980 bridges just like the I-35W,” the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed three years ago killing 13 and injuring 145.
“That bridge was rated ‘poor’ for 16 years before it collapsed. Right now the time bomb is ticking in America. It’s getting worse every day.”
LePatner, author of “Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets,” and “Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure & the Way Forward,” due out Nov. 9, said Wednesday, “The numbers are so mind boggling. What’s clear is we do not have the money to pay for it.”
What about the American Restoration and Recovery Act? “The money in the stimulus is barely putting a toe into the water when we look at the enormity of the problem.”
The American Society of Civil Engineers agrees.
Their latest Infrastructure Report Card shows ARRA funds fixing barely a third of what they call essential infrastructure beyond design life.
ASCE estimates America must invest at least $2.2 trillion over the next five years just to stay even.
They estimate “actual” spending at about $903 billion, though according to spokeswoman Leikny Johnson, the society has not determined if states and municipalities actually are doing remediation projects they have raised and allocated funds for.
LePatner says don’t count on it. “Politicians want all the money to go to new projects. If some contributor wants a road to some development, that gets the money whether anybody needs it or not. Tens of millions (of dollars) are being misused.”
In July the Government Accountability Office reported “over 600,000 bridges … of which one in four is deficient in some sense.”
And even though “data indicate the number … has decreased over the last 12 years” the “impact of the federal investment … is difficult to measure, in part because there are no comprehensive and complementary data for state and local bridge spending.”
That’s just for bridges, one of the most closely monitored categories of all public works.
What about others? Even including “Estimated Actual” and designated ARRA spending, ASCE calculates “Five-Year Investment Shortfall” at:
§ Aviation….………………………$ 40.7 billion
§ Dams…….………………………….7.45 billion
§ Drinking water & wastewater…..108.5 billion
§ Energy…………………….……….29.5 billion
§ Hazardous waste & solid waste….43.5 billion
§ Inland waterways…………………20.5 billion
§ Levees………………………………1.13 billion
§ Public Parks & recreation…..……48.17 billion
§ Rail…………………………………11.7 billion
§ Roads & bridges………………….549.5 billion
§ Schools…………………………….35.0 billion
§ Public transit……………………….66.5 billion
If states and municipal leaders are deferring projects to get false balanced budgets, and stimulus money is being misspent, the true infrastructure deficit is even higher.
This is the deficit that kills, literally.
For at least a decade politicians have been hiding trillions of dollars in real state and municipal deficits through accounting tricks.
They deferred at least $3 trillion in retirement promises, $3 trillion in catastrophe funds, and trillions of dollars more in skipped “self-insurance” premiums, looted operating balances and “rainy day” funds, bonding to pay recurring expenses, and losses on exotic financial deals.
All those scams against taxpayers and public workers are bad enough, but they don’t kill.
Collapsing bridges do kill.
It is past time for citizens to get informed, get involved, remove those who led us into this catastrophe and put people into office with the guts to lead us out.
Any taxpayer, public worker, group or journalist who wants to dig into state and local government should contact Frank Keegan, a national editor for The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, watchdog.org and statehousenewsonline.com . frank.keegan@franklincenterhq.org
