The road funding plans moving through the House and Senate would mark a first: they’d reduce the amount of money the state considers an adequate reserve. Three decades ago, the state thought a six-and-a-half-percent surplus was enough, only to discover in the 1991 recession that it wasn’t. Governors have gradually targeted larger and larger surpluses until Governor Mitch Daniels effectively capped the surplus at 12-and-a-half-percent with the automatic tax refund law.
