The state’s Special Transportation Fund spent $1.61 billion in 2019 — the last fiscal year before the coronavirus pandemic struck. After adjusting for inflation, that’s just 21% growth since 2011. The debt service on the hundreds of millions of dollars Connecticut borrows annually for highway, bridge and rail upgrades, and spending on transit programs, together consume about two-thirds of the STF. Eight years ago, they were slightly more than 62%. Connecticut’s construction industry came into the 2010s reeling, having shrunk from about 70,000 jobs down to 50,000 in the 2008-09 recession, according to state Department of Labor statistics. But despite three successive annual increases in the state’s wholesale fuel tax — from July 2005 through 2007 — and a fourth one in 2013, the state’s investment in transportation construction largely remained flat. Lamont had no new solutions when asked about transportation one day after the Nov. 3 elections, but he said he won’t pitch tolls again in 2021. “I came up with my best solution for what I thought was a transportation crisis,” he said, adding the coronavirus has only worsened things, with reduced travel meaning less fuel tax receipts. But Wray said policymakers can wrangle over how to raise the funds all they want, but sooner rather than later, more dollars will be needed — or Connecticut’s economy will continue to suffer.
