Are jobs about to move on down the road?
By Lori Sturdevant, Star Tribune
December 16, 2007
The very long-running argument for more investment in Minnesota's transportation system has added a new trailer, as the big roads-and-transit lobby rumbles toward one more go-round at the Capitol next year.
Through the 1990s, the case for spending more featured a lot of talk about frustrated soccer moms, stuck in traffic and missing their kids' games. Jacking up spending was portrayed as the quality-of-life thing to do.
In 2002, the business community began to speak up (though often in a whisper), and raising the gas tax became the competitive thing to do. Got to keep those goods and services moving to keep up with other states, the pleaders said.
The energy-independence and global-warming worriers started chiming in a few years ago. Put people in buses and trains, and keep their cars moving rather than idling, and Minnesotans will burn less foreign oil and put less carbon into the atmosphere, they said.
Local governments have been getting into the act lately. If the state doesn't spend, the locals must, they lament. Edina GOP state Rep. Ron Erhardt's pithy analysis of the situation is lodged in memory: It's "little old ladies in Minneapolis who don't drive much paying for roads, so that people from the suburbs can drive faster through their neighborhoods."
The new car on this train hitched on amid word that the state's economy is braking, fast. The latest argument: Spending more on roads and transit is countercyclical and projobs.
The president of a 160-employee engineering firm made that point so forcefully at a state Chamber of Commerce Grow Minnesota! luncheon on Dec. 4 that some of his listeners likely had trouble swallowing their mousse dessert.
"We need to find a dedicated funding source for transportation" above and beyond the 20-cent-per-gallon gas tax, said Bret Weiss, president of WSB & Associates. "The governor needs to get behind it and get something done."
Last week at his Golden Valley office, near proud displays of his firm's local work, Weiss elaborated: Minnesota is on the verge of losing a sizable number of good-paying construction and engineering jobs to other states.
Construction professionals stayed in Minnesota in recent years despite the state's refusal to spend more on transportation, because a hot housing market and business boom kept them occupied. That changed with the economic cycle, he said. Unless the state steps up transportation funding in 2008, "it's going to become very clear to everybody that there are no dollars out there" to sustain the industry.
Wait a few years to boost transportation spending, and contracts of necessity will go to national engineering and construction firms, he predicted. That won't produce nearly the desired ripple through the Minnesota economy that spending now on locally based firms would.
"We need to be smarter about this," he said. Smarter means not just more spending but the more-consistent spending over time that can anchor good jobs here. "I'm not asking anybody to give me anything just because I'm a Minnesotan. I'm saying: At least give me a shot. I can bring a lot of employees into this state, and those are great jobs. ... Why not try to foster this industry here, as we do so many others?"
Weiss isn't just speaking up at business luncheons. He's organizing other presidents of consulting engineering firms, hoping they will make a united stand at the Capitol next session.
They'll tout the value of the 3,000 jobs they represent, he said. And they'll attest to one other thing: The state's construction dollar will stretch a lot farther now, in a down economy, than it will in boom times. There are bargains to be had, right now.
"Engineers have been very creative in making our system limp along, so people could think that we can function without spending more," he said. "We haven't been very vocal. Now it's time for us to stand up and say [that] we have to do what's right for our state."
The fledgling engineer-lobbyists should go to the Capitol forewarned: In an election-year legislative session -- and in a year when Minnesota and its governor are assured of a national spotlight -- what's right could run headlong into what's politically expedient, and could get derailed.
But the new lobbyists should also find a warm welcome from the soccer moms, goods movers, environmentalists and local officials who've been fighting a good fight for years. They'll tell the newbies: This cause is worth their best shot.
Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist.
She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.
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