Vol 17, Issue 30 Print Issue

Swapping Potholes for Skylights

Some of the same people who voted to constitutionally limit state borrowing four years ago have found a way to issue hundreds of millions of dollars in new state highway bonds without counting the new debt against that constitutional cap. Each of the three different types of bonds spelled out in current highway funding proposals would punch a skylight into the legal debt ceiling designed to brake the heavy borrowing that began during the prison-building boom of the 1990s.