By contrast, GO and other tax-supported debt instruments are not generally issued with enforceable claims for current maintenance. Ordinary infrastructure projects produce returns in the form of public goods, not cash — public goods that benefit taxpayers, not bondholders. Those projects’ bonds are paid for by taxpayers, not direct users, and taxing and spending for payment are part of the annual budget process, where any pro-maintenance lobby is a perpetual minority.

So, yes, we should consider reconfiguring state and local finance laws, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, to provide the equivalent of debt service protection for maintenance requirements, by authorizing financing mechanisms for ordinary infrastructure that recognize enforceable claims for current maintenance and repair. This would entail authorizing a parallel structure to a revenue-bond financing structure.

The aim here would be for budget-makers to provide for maintenance spending, along with debt service spending, before recognizing other claims on annual revenue. A one-size-fits-all model or uniform law would probably not work for 50 states.

This is not to suggest that maintenance claims are more important than the compelling and competing claims of teachers, police, or sick children. It is, however, to suggest that maintenance claims — like the claims of bondholders — are unlikely ever to be met in the normal political process without structural fiscal safeguards. So, unless we change the rules of the game, we’ll probably have to live with our “crumbling” infrastructure.

Editor’s Note: Eugene W. Harper Jr., a retired New York bond lawyer, teaches infrastructure finance at the Baruch College, City University of New York, School of Public Affairs. This article ran originally in The Bond Buyer newspaper. Bond Buyer is a SourceMedia publication. SourceMedia is owned by Investcorp, which also owns Randall-Reilly, the parent company of Better Roads.