Transportation Funding: Will Counties Be Left Holding the Bag?

The Reno Gazette-Journal's Jerry Purdy makes the case for a county-level gas tax hike of 5 cents to help resolve Reno's transportation funding woes. The heart of the case? The federal and state lawmakers who should be coming up with transportation funding solutions have simply fallen down on the job-- which means that Reno can either pay its own way to better roads, or watch their transportation grid collapse into rubble.
This is yet another example of the real "trickle-down" theory being practiced by elected officials at the federal and state levels these days: Congress passes the buck on important spending needs to the state level, where lawmakers dodge the bullet yet again by paring back aid to local governments. But locals don't have the same luxury: they either have to hike taxes or stop providing essential services. Purdy's right: it shouldn't have to come to this, but it seems increasingly likely that local tax hikes will be the only way out of Nevada's transportation mess.