Speaker Robin Vos says he will again push toll roads in Wisconsin to raise money for transportation infrastructure

MADISON - The Legislature's top Republican signaled Wednesday he would again examine the idea of implementing a tolling system in Wisconsin in an effort to boost revenue for roads and bridges.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, has unsuccessfully pushed for tolls in Wisconsin for a decade. He downplayed its chances of ending up in the final 2023-25 state budget but told reporters Wednesday he would try.

"I'm going to look at it again," he said after speaking. "I am going to make an effort to say we need to figure out a long-term answer, but I have had challenges. I don't think Governor Evers is necessarily there. And I'm not sure my Senate Republican colleagues are necessarily there. So I certainly am going to keep trying to talk about it because we have to pay for our roads. It can't just be more money from the federal government when we know that that spigot eventually is going to end."

Vos and then-Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who now represents Wisconsin's 5th Congressional District, pursued the idea by proposing funding in the state budget to study a tolling system in order to infuse Wisconsin’s highway system with cash. Evers vetoed the funding.

Britt Cudaback, spokeswoman for Evers, said the revenue that would come from tolling wouldn't materialize for years. She said Evers has proposed new revenue for roads in the current budget that would be accessible immediately.

Evers has proposed taking portions of revenue from the state sales tax on electric vehicles and on the sale of auto parts, tires, and repair services toward infrastructure improvements. The proposal would transfer nearly $190 million from the general fund to the transportation fund over the next two years, according to the governor's office.

Republican lawmakers who control the state Legislature and Evers have begun negotiations on the 2023-25 state budget. Evers proposed a two-year $104 billion spending plan in February, which will be largely ignored by Republicans on the Legislature's budget-writing committee. The panel will begin taking up the budget piece by piece in the coming weeks.

Vos said Wednesday if lawmakers had agreed to implement a tolling system a decade ago when the idea was last robustly considered, the transportation system would be "fully funded."

"Imagine it's 2013 when we first started talking about tolling — we have more money than local roads," Vos said. "We have a system that would actually work over the course of the next 100 years as we decide whether or not to transition away from gasoline. We couldn't get that done. Unfortunately, we now sit with a worse problem 10 years later."

Federal law tightly limits tolling on roads that receive federal funding. In 2019, Department of Transportation Secretary Craig Thompson said the state could try to get permission from the federal government for one of three pilot projects on tolling for federally funded roads, which would have provided limited revenue, but the plan did not ultimately materialize.

Former DOT Secretary Mark Gottlieb, who served under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker between 2011 and 2017, cautioned against the idea in 2018.

A 2016 state study on tolling estimated up to 23 cents of every dollar collected in tolls would be spent on building and operating the toll collection system itself instead of going toward fixing roadways, according to Gottlieb.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said Wednesday that Republican lawmakers writing the next state budget will likely discuss expanding the number of electric vehicle charging stations in the state and whether tax revenue can be utilized from those endeavors.

Democratic legislative leaders said Wednesday they wanted the state to focus on transportation alternatives to cars, including an Amtrak expansion and bike trails.

"I think it's really quite important that we fund our local governments and make sure that you all have the ability to take care of the roads that are currently there, but that we also think about how it is that we want to help people get around that meets them where they're at and thinks about where we want to be in a decade or in two or three decades," Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard, D- Madison, said during a panel discussion at the counties association' conference.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Robin Vos says he will again push for a toll road system in Wisconsin