Arizona Highway Department Construction Progress Report

JANUARY, 1930 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Page Twenty-five Car Owners Claim Overcharges Made For Auto Plates By Maricopa County

Immediate discontinuance of the practice of charging more than $3.50, the legal rate, as fees for the registration of automobiles in Maricopa county, is asked in a letter written by E. M. Whitworth, Superintendent of the Motor Vehicle Division of the State Highway Department, to Ed Oglesby, county assessor of Maricopa county.

The letter advises Mr. Oglesby that evidence received by the Motor Vehicle Division shows that at Glendale and Chandler, where branches for the issuance of license plates have been established, fees of $4 and $4.50 for license plates have been exacted. Such charges, Mr. Whitworth declares, are without authority of the law, which plainly provides that a fee of $3.50 shall be charged.

Mr. Whitworth in commenting upon the situation, which was brought to the attention of the highway officials and the motor vehicle division through complaints of motor owners who had paid the fees, declared that the charges were made without the sanction of the motor vehicle division and without knowledge of highway and motor vehicle officials until complaints were received.

The matter is being turned over to the attorney general of the state and to the county attorney for such action as may be necessary. In making public the letter Mr. Whitworth also advises the automobile owners not to pay more than $3.50 as a registration fee, since that is the amount specified by law. Of that amount the law allows the county assessor fifty cents to cover the charges of issuing the plates.

The letter in full to Mr. Oglesby is as follows:

"Dear Sir:

"This letter is addressed to you as an agent of the motor vehicle division Arizona Highway department, in the matter of the issuance of certificates of registration and license plates for motor vehicles and collection of fees in respect thereto.

"Complaint has been made to the vehicle division, Arizona Highway department, that certain of your deputies, agents, or employes, your representatives in the matter of issuance of registration certificates and license plates for motor vehicles in Maricopa county, Arizona, have been and are exacting from applicants for motor vehicle registration varying sums of money in excess of the fee provided by law as a condition of the issuance of registration and license plates. The division is not at this time aware of the exact extent of the practice. The division has before it evidence of instances at Glendale, Arizona, where your agent or his agent has exacted and received the sum of $4 for motor vehicle registration instead of the sum of $3.50 provided by law. The division has before it evidence of instances at Chandler, Arizona, where the sum of $4.50 was exacted and recevied by your agent as motor vehicle registration fee instead of the fee of $3.50 as provided by statute.

"You and your deputies certainly are aware, and all agents representing you in this connection should be aware, that such a practice is wholly unauthorized by law, and, as the division is informed, a violation of law, and a wholly unwarranted, unjust and oppressive procedure. The motor vehicle division disclaims any responsibility for any such practice, protests its continuance, and calls upon you to secure its immediate discontinuance.

"As above stated, the department has instances of this wrong doing. In addition, the department has information to the effect that this practice has been and is being applied generally in Glendale and Chandler, Arizona. The division is further informed that your agents or their agents exacting money in addition to the lawful fee have given as an explanation that the state does not provide enough money to cover the expense of the registration of motor vehicles in Maricopa county. As you are aware, the state allows you, and you do take under the law, 50 cents for each motor vehicle registration effected by you or your agents for the purpose of defraying the expense of registration. Although such an excuse would in no way justify the collection of additional money in the registration of motor vehicles, your attention is directed to the fact that your return to this division for 1929 business showed that you had received from your lawful fees more than $26,000 for administration of motor vehicle registration.

"Frankly, the conditions set forth in this letter are deplorable. The neces-sary enforcement of the motor vehicle code in the registering and licensing of motor vehicles unavoidably works enough inconvenience and hardship upon the vehicle-owning public without this additional unlawful and unwarranted burden. It is difficult to understand how such a condition could exist or be permitted to exist.

"A copy of this letter is sent to the attorney general of the state of Arizona and the county attorney of Maricopa county, Arizona, for such action as may be proper, and a copy is given to the press for the immediate information and protection of the public."

HERE'S HOW NOT TO CATCH COLD

Common colds caused a loss of 56 years of man-hour service, within a single industrial organization over a four-year period, according to a recent statement by Dr. C. O. Sappington, director of the Division of Public Health of the National Safety Council.

In this statement Dr. Sappington suggests that we "Take a health tabloidnot a tablet," and he points out the following major causes of colds:

The natural remedies are also pointed out as follows:

Proper medical attention must not be overlooked, says Dr. Sappington. A fresh cold may be checked at the outset if proper medical measures are taken.

DON'T BLAME THE ROAD

Slippery roads, it is stated, have been the cause of many motor accidents. Perhaps it is not the slippery roads, but too fast driving on slippery roads, which is the real cause. Wonder if anyone ever thought of that? The roads do not move, and can be blamed for little in that respect.

Page Twenty-six RADIO TURNS TO AID OF SAFETY MOVEMENT

Radio safety talks by Jane Addams, world-famous social worker and author, and by Major O. L. Bodenhamer, National Commander of the American Legion, and two safety playlets, have inaugurated the Second Universal Safety Series which is being presented to the American people by the National Broadcasting Company in conjunction with the National Safety Council.

This new series of safety addresses and playlets will continue over a period of thirteen consecutive weeks, as a follow-up of the First Universal Safety Series of twelve addresses, which began on April 20 of this year with a talk by Charles M. Schwab, and which included such nationally famous people as Robert P. Lamont, secretary of Commerce; P. E. Crowley, president of the New York Central Lines; Grover A. Whalen, New York City Commissioner of Police, and. James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor.from a total of $377,800,000. In other words the counties in the group of 17 states get 24 per cent of the total and those of the 31 states get only 14 per cent.

FINANCING HIGHWAYS (Continued from page 15)

I submit that it all comes down to this: That it is generally true that the states that do not issue state bonds for highway purposes return to the counties a greater proportion of the motor vehicle revenues which the counties use to borrow money at high rates of interest in order to help the state eke out their deficient debt-free income.I do not wish to be understood as favoring the issuance of bonds under all circumstances. I have said that I believe there are a few states in which there is no longer the need that existed a few years ago for the employment of this method of financing. But I also repeat that every state can still profitably issue bonds for certain purposes, if not for primary highway building, then for grade crossing elemination, or needed bridges, or the provision of additional facilities for the relief of traffic congestion, or for any of the numerous improvements which remain to be accomplished in order to raise the efficiency of highway service to the desirable ultimate.

The outstanding advantage of the bond issue plan may be briefly stated as follows:But what of the actual dollars and cents cost of the two methods? If we borrow money we must pay interest. Consequently we pay considerably more than a dollar for every dollar obtained for road construction. Would it not be better to pay the cost directly and so save the additional cost of borrowing? If, without undue burden of taxation the roads can be built as rapidly as it is possible to build them, the answer is "yes." If road service is already reas onably efficient and economical trans-portation is already provided for in large degree, the answer is "yes." But these conditions obtain in few of our states.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

To illustrate the relative costs of construction by the methods of financing and at the same time to show why it is sound economics to pay the additional cost of the bond method in order to speed up construction, let me cite an example based on an actual bond issue, the $60,000,000 issue voted in Illinois in 1918. The interest rate on these bonds is 4 per cent. Payment of interest began in 1922. Retirement began in 1926. It is planned to complete retirement in 1944 and on this basis the total interest payment will be $33,200,000. For each dollar borrowed the state will pay $1.55. The bond issue sold for $58,496,978 in the years 1921 to 1924 inclusive. The roads built average $39,394 per mile and the money realized paid for 1,480 miles which were completed by 1925. Amortization is spread over a period of 25 years, making an average annual payment of $4,052,200.Let us suppose that instead of issuing the bonds this same average annual sum had been used to pay for these roads directly. It would then have taken 15 years to complete the roads which under the bond plan were completed in five years. In other words, the 1,480 miles of road were available for an average period of five years under the bond plan before they would have been available under the pay-as-you-go plan.

JANUARY, 1930

So much is actual fact. Now we must make one or two assumptions. We will make them conservatively. We must estimate the number of vehicles these 1,480 miles of paved road would serve for the period of five years and the saving in operating cost that would be returned to the operators for these vehicles by the availability of the improved roads. Let us estimate that each mile of these roads will be used every day of the five years by an average of only 1,000 vehicles and that the saving to the owners of these vehicles is 1½ cents per mile. Both of these estimates will be considered, I believe, as sufficiently conservative. The result is an estimated saving of $40,515,000 in operating cost over the five-year period, by which improved highway service has been advanced, which exceeds the interest cost on the bond issue by $7,315,000.

There is still more to be said about this bond issue. It was financed exclusively with motor vehicle revenues, and no increase in the rate of motor vehicle taxation was permitted. In 1921, when the first bonds were sold, receipts of motor vehicle revenues amounted to $6,803,556. In 1928, seven years later, annual receipts had increased to $15,521,530. In other words the personal liability of the motor vehicle owners who assumed the debt in 1921 was cut in half by 1928.

The use of motor vehicle revenues to finance bond issues dates from 1918. Prior to that year all issues of state highway bonds were financed from the proceeds of general property taxes. In 1913 Maine began to issue bonds at the rate of $500,000 a year for highway purposes, the issues to be financed from the proceeds of the motor vehicle tax. The procedure, which came, to be known as the "Maine plan," proved its soundness in practice and other states were quick to adopt it. As a result we find that of all issues authorized between 1894 and 1928, totaling $1,391,716,500, the sum of $670,374,000 is being financed either from motor vehicle fees or gasoline taxes, or both. Of the remaining $14,500,000 are being financed from