GOP Legislature circulating bills that would allow for design-build

Listen to this article

Republican lawmakers on Wednesday began seeking sponsors for about a dozen transportation-related bills that could include an alternative to a gas-tax increase and allow for the use of the design-build system on highway projects.

State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, a Republican from New Berlin, said at least a dozen transportation-related bills put forward by various GOP lawmakers were being circulated on Wednesday as part of a plan that lawmakers are calling the “Road to Sustainability.” The proposals could increase the tax revenue received by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation while both decreasing spending on the department and instituting other policy changes.

The proposals are intended as a replacement of the transportation plan that Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, laid out earlier this year as part of his two-year budget proposal. Evers had called for increasing WisDOT spending by $608 million over the next biennium largely by increasing the state’s gas tax by as much as 10 cents a gallon by the end of the budgetary period.

Rather than raise the gas tax, Sanfelippo is proposing to have part of the taxes now collected on car and auto-parts sales be put into the state’s transportation fund.  Recent polling has suggested that the public isn’t likely to accept the prospect of paying more at the pump.

“The gas tax isn’t going to pass,” Sanfelippo said. “There’s no support for it in the legislature and people don’t want it.”

Sanfelippo previously said his plan would raise about $258 million over the next biennium and about $440 million for roads in the budget after that, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Sanfelippo said on Wednesday that he’ll most likely introduce his legislation in the next week or so. Other bills being circulated call for raising revenue for the transportation fund by increasing the state’s vehicle-registration fees from $75 a year and impose accountability measures in response to defects identified in a recent Legislative Audit Bureau review of WisDOT.

Still another bill would revive a proposal to allow design-build delivery on road projects instead of the design-bid-build method used almost exclusively on Wisconsin infrastructure contracts. Supporters of design-build argue that letting contractors have influence over project designs could help catch costly flaws, saving money.

In the past, though, opposition to the design-build system has been widespread in the Wisconsin construction industry, coming from groups that are usually at odds with each other.

When Sanfelippo introduced a design-build bill in 2017, his proposal elicited opposition from both the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139 and the Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin, which represents mainly non-union contractors, were among the critics. The groups had previously opposed changes to the state’s low-bidding system and said the proposal would favor large companies with in-house design professionals. Follow @natebeck9