Tiffany hopes to cut construction timelines, Crowley open to tolls, user fees

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(The Center Square) – Republican Tom Tiffany said that he plans to both cut taxes and return the state’s more than $3 billion surplus to taxpayers through tax cuts and also increase funding for transportation in a way that will accelerate road construction and repair projects.

Democrat David Crowley said that Tiffany’s plans aren’t possible while cutting taxes and that he is open to both road tolling and a new user fee system to fund road and bridge repairs, something that Tiffany said he was against in Wednesday’s debate for Wisconsin governor.

“We have enough money in the state budget that we can fund things like transportation,” Tiffany said. “We can fund things like education. They just need to be prioritized.”

Both candidates said that they were against indexing the state gas tax to inflation.

Tiffany noted that the 10-year estimate to complete repairs on a 3.5-mile stretch of Interstate 94 in Milwaukee is unacceptable and that he would increase funding to make sure that businesses and residents are not negatively impacted by construction for that long.

“We should not have transportation projects that take eight years for 3 1/2 miles and they will not when I become governor because we are going to put additional money into transportation,” Tiffany said.

Crowley responded by saying that Tiffany’s plans are not real because they don’t make fiscal sense.

“How are you going to get the revenues when you continuously cut the amount of revenues coming to government?” Crowley asked. “This is the reason why cities, towns, villages and our school districts all across the state are struggling today.”