For those opposed to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's proposed 45-cent gas tax, State Budget Director Chris Kolb says Michigan has six other options for new revenues to fund new road spending in Michigan. These range from new personal or corporate income taxes to higher sales and use taxes, property taxes or vehicle registration fees.

"If you don't like this solution, then you can bring another one to us," Crain's reported Kolb saying. "But we need $2.5 billion — and there's only so many ways to raise that."

Here's one more solution for consideration: The fairest, least disruptive and most effective way to unlock more funding for our roads would simply be to unwind Michigan's massive — and massively ineffective — collection of economic development subsidy and incentive programs. Before imposing a huge tax hike at the pump, our first step should simply be to stop Michigan's state and local politicians from making deals that excuse a few favored companies from paying the same taxes that everyone else does.

Michigan's one of the most profligate states in the country at these types of deals, which are consistently found by researchers from across the philosophical and political spectrum to do little to improve net job creation while favoring big businesses over smaller or less politically connected competitors.

Additionally, the evidence is clear that we're not risking the "jobs going elsewhere" without these programs, as overwhelmingly they subsidize decisions companies have already made based on basic factors such as the overall competitive landscape and their access to customers, workers, suppliers, resources, infrastructure and the like.

What would happen if we eliminated state and local economic development programs in Michigan and redirected those resources to infrastructure? It's difficult to identify exactly how much money is on the table thanks to famously transparency-averse economic development bureaucracies, but even a high-level look at recent public budgets and reports shows that the money to "fix the damn roads" is likely there if we want it. Consider:

In 2017, Michigan state and local governments reported a combined $944 million in decreased tax revenues that year due to economic development tax abatement deals.

In 2018, the Michigan Strategic Fund board approved $719 million in new brownfield tax increment finance plans, which are a recently expanded mechanism for diverting taxes out of state and local government budgets to fund development projects. In the first two months of 2019, the MSF has approved another $73 million of these deals.

In 2017, the MSF spent $320 million on program expenses, $213 million of which was a direct transfer from the state government.

The Michigan Economic Development Corp. spends $22 million per year on salaries and benefits alone. That might only be slightly less than one percent of the $2.5 billion per year we're told is needed to "fix the damn roads," but $22 million buys a lot more laborers in high-visibility vests filling potholes than it does MEDC staffers, who regularly count the highest-paid workers in state government among their numbers. (For instance, a 2017 public records request from MLive found that the person in charge of fixing the state's almost 10,000 miles of roads, Michigan Department of Transportation director Kirk Steudle, had an annual salary of $165,000. That same year, MEDC CEO Steven Arwood made $283,000.)

Of course, only some of this money would be immediately available. Much of it is locked up in contracts that can cover decades, which couldn't be quickly unwound.

However, roads are a long-term problem and in the short term, making the decision to prioritize infrastructure quality over ineffective corporate welfare would avoid the massive economic hit of a $2.5 billion tax hike that would slam Michigan's overall competitiveness, make the state less attractive to cost-sensitive logistics and manufacturing employers and put our state's small businesses at yet another cost disadvantage to their larger competitors.

It also wouldn't tie Michigan's road funding to gasoline sales just as our auto industry is devoting itself to reducing — if not eliminating — gasoline consumption in the vehicles that will be using those roads. In the long run, a policy of rolling back development subsidies and incentives would create an environment of increasing revenues over time as existing programs and contracts continue to sunset. Compare this to gas tax revenues that will only shrink over time — even with Michigan's gas tax-linked electric vehicle registration fees — and necessitate yet another debate over new revenue streams in the years to come.

Before we raise taxes on everyone in Michigan, let's simply start making everyone pay the taxes we already have.