Thread: California Legislature votes to raise gas taxes for road repairs and transit

Originally Posted by Judy

It's actually a smart time to do it while gas prices are low.

Once the tax is there it will be there to stay and gas prices will eventually go back up.

In April, California legislators approved a 12-cent-per-gallon increase to the state gas tax and additional vehicle registration fees to pay for the massive infrastructure spending initiative.

The state's backlog of highway and bridge repairs total about $130 billion. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, approximately 50% of the state's roads need improvements.

The California Transportation Commission has given the green light to a $328 million program of state infrastructure improvements, according to Equipment World.
The list of 88 projects includes nearly $36 million for biking and pedestrian initiatives and $234 million for "fix-it-first" highway repairs and upgrades. Also part of the spending program are two rail projects, capital improvements along the state highway system and traffic congestion programs.
State officials said more transportation spending programs like this are on the horizon because of California Gov. Jerry Brown's 10-year, $52 billion transportation funding bill.

Sounds like a great program, that's going to do a lot of great things for California. Most Americans don't mind paying taxes to fund projects and improvements, so long as they are projects that are needed, beneficial or ameliorating. I don't know from the statement in bold if at the end of 10 years the 12 cents comes off, but that's what it sounds like. This is actually the old-fashioned way of financing and paying for infrastructure improvements. Pay as you go. Very Republican, that's how we paid for the first inter-continental railroad using rail bonds, and how states have paid for a lot of things through the years including education facility improvements, school bonds.

It's exciting to me to see states taking the lead like this to fix their states. This is how it's supposed to work.

GO STATES!!!

These types of activities are encouraging to me, and while I can't stand Jerry Brown and his coddling of illegal aliens, I do applaud this gas tax that appears to be a 10 year program to fix their roads, bridges, build some more rail systems and many other transportation related projects. Californians need to remember how much Americans like me and there are millions and millions of US have always looked to California as one of our nation's most special states, a Paradise of sorts, filled with so many beautiful aspects and achievements from it's extraordinary natural beauty to its beautiful people in Hollywood to its beach parties, surfers and relaxed people who were always coming up with a new idea about something. I realize it's not the same today as when I was growing up but it's nice to still have moments like this when you can at least think so, even if only for awhile, whether true or not. Maybe that "I wish it were so" is the essence of "California Dreamin'".

Ted Gaines column: California taxpayers gouged at the pump




Here are a few facts that should give pause to anyone supporting California's new gas tax: California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) is overstaffed by 3,500 people, wasting $500 million every year that could be going to roads; California diverts a billion dollars in "weight fees" into the general fund annually, which should also be paying for roads; Californians already pay some of the highest gas taxes in the country but have some of the worst roads, which points to an efficiency problem.

It's plain to see that the fake funding crisis used to push the new taxes through the legislature was really a crisis of political priorities. The money is there — without the new taxes — to pay for modern, smooth roadways up and down the state.

Still, the legislature has a default position, and that's to pickpocket taxpayers and businesses at every turn. Hence, the new tax to backfill the waste and diversions that should be paying for roads right now.

Gov. Jerry Brown, oblivious to the actual effect the bill will have on businesses and families, tried to deflect criticisms of the new tax's cost by noting that it will set back the average family about $10 a month.

Are my rural constituents, who drive 45 minutes to get to the grocery store, supposed to be happy because of that average? Are my suburban commuters putting 80 miles a day on their cars supposed to be happy with that average? It will be meaningless to them, as they will pay hundreds of dollars more a year in gas taxes and registration fees to pay for roads that their tax dollars already could have and should have paid for.

Because of this government decision to raise gas taxes $0.12 a gallon, diesel $0.20, and add an additional registration fee of $25-$175 on each vehicle (and that is just a partial list of the new charges), everyone in the state can expect to pay more for everything they buy, from school clothes to groceries to laptops. Not because the items are better, but because California legislators are attaching a premium to everything with their relentless search for tax dollars.

These new taxes and fees aren't one-time charges. They go on forever under the current bill, and will start increasing, indefinitely, starting in 2020.

I want first-class infrastructure for our state and am willing to pay for it, but not twice. That's what this cynical bill does to our residents. It forces them to pay a second time for roads that their tax dollars already could have built. It's backfilling an imaginary shortfall to cover up government failure.

A state that can afford to waste tens of billions of dollars on the colossally expensive and worthless High Speed Rail is not a state starving for money. To California's majority party, though, every problem looks like a deficit and every solution looks like a tax. It's killing the middle and lower classes in the state.

Our state has the 48th-worst tax climate already, but this gas tax proves, yet again, that legislators can't leave unwell enough alone.

http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/new...t-the-pump/Sen. Ted Gaines represents the 1st Senate District, which includes all or parts of Alpine, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Shasta, Sierra and Siskiyou counties.

JUNE 7, 2017

N.J. incumbents who supported unpopular gas tax hike win

Many New Jersey residents were upset when the state gas tax shot up by 23 cents a gallon last year to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund. But they didn't take it out on lawmakers. (AP file photo)

Many New Jersey residents were upset when the state gas tax shot up by 23 cents a gallon last year to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund. But they didn't take it out on the lawmakers who approved that increase in Tuesday's primary election.

All the state legislators who voted for the tax increase won, said Monmouth University political analyst Patrick Murray.

"On the Republican side — which is where there was some concern that it could hurt some incumbents there who had supported it — the turnout was so low, that there just wasn't much enthusiasm about voting about anything," he said.

Some challengers focused on the gas tax hike, Montclair State political science professor Brigid Harrison said, but that didn't resonate with voters.

"What we see is that party lines matter," she said. "So all of the individuals who voted for the gas tax received the party endorsement in the various districts, and that was the determining factor in the election."

If gas prices were higher, Fairleigh Dickinson political science professor Peter Woolley said the tax hike might have been a more potent issue.

"The price of gas is not particularly high now," Woolley said Wednesday. "People don't go the pump and curse the way they did a few years ago. So, really, the gas tax has not had the same kind of impact it might have if prices were high."

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/l...-tax-hike-win/

Okay, I thought we were discussing California's gas tax hike, not New Jersey's.

Discussing GAS TAX.

5/1/17

Trump says he’d consider increasing the gas tax

JUN 7, 2017 @ 10:24 AM 220

The Federal Gas Tax Is Old -- And Broken

Tax Analysts

The leading global publisher of tax news, analysis and commentary
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Joseph Thorndike, Contributor

The federal gas tax turned 85 yesterday – pretty respectable for an excise but nothing compared with federal levies on alcohol and tobacco, which first appeared in 1789.

Still, the gas tax is looking less spry than it once did. As the principal source of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, the gas tax has an important task to accomplish: ensuring that the nation’s infrastructure keeps pace with a growing economy. But it’s no longer getting the job done.

Shutterstock

Congress hasn’t raised the gas tax in 24 years. In 1993 lawmakers pegged it at 18.4 cents per gallon. Since then, however, construction costs have increased dramatically, speeding the trust fund’s outflow. At the same time, automobile fuel efficiency has also risen, allowing motorists to drive more miles on less gas – and thereby slowing the trust fund’s inflow.

Squeezed from both sides, the trust fund has been chronically short of revenue during the last decade or so. Last year, faced with yet another “crisis,” Congress cobbled together a five-year patch that relied heavily on budgetary legerdemain. Notably, however, lawmakers declined to take the more obvious route to long-term solvency: raising the gas tax.

Generally speaking, taxes don’t do well when left unattended; they require maintenance and attention, at least once in a while. Left to their own devices, they tend to decay. That’s certainly what happened to the gas tax -- it hasn’t kept pace with changing economic circumstances.

But along the road to gradual inadequacy, the gas tax hit an even bigger speed bump: In 1990 Congress broke the tax when lawmakers raided it for cash. For most of its modern history, the gas tax has been a more or less straightforward user fee— drivers paid for road construction using a tax that was pretty well correlated with road usage.

In 1990, however, Congress changed the deal. As part of a deficit reduction package, lawmakers and President George H.W. Bush agreed to boost the gas tax from 9.1 cents to 14 cents per gallon. And crucially, they used half the new revenue for deficit reduction, not road construction.

The 1990 switch was a turning point in gas tax history. Yes, it’s true that Congress had previously used gas tax revenue to pay for things other than infrastructure. In fact, the first federal gas tax was itself an “emergency” levy designed to cope with sagging revenues in the early years of the Great Depression.

But since Dwight Eisenhower made the gas tax the fiscal foundation of his new interstate highway system, the gas tax has been a road tax. And as a road tax, it was well tolerated. As historian Christopher W. Wells has noted, "The tax was neither onerous nor obvious -- paid a few cents at a time, with the exact amount unadvertised -- and it funded conspicuous, large-scale road construction."

But that was before Congress started meddling with the gas tax. To be sure, the 1990 experiment was short-lived; after another revenue grab in 1993, lawmakers returned the tax to its traditional role. After 1997, it was a road tax again. But the damage was done.

Today, support for higher gas taxes is not completely absent from the political landscape. Some national polls suggest that voters are willing to contemplate an increase if the money is devoted to building better roads. But state-level polls are often less encouraging, and most politicians (at least in Washington) seem convinced that any sort of gas tax increase would be political poison. The politicians may be right – as experts in pandering, they’re pretty good at divining the electorate’s short-term preferences.

But someday, lawmakers will be faced with another trust fund “crisis.” And even sooner, they may have to grapple with President Trump’s much-advertised but still undelivered infrastructure plan.

Either way, the gas tax – or something like it, including a miles-driven tax – deserves serious consideration. After all, it worked for a few decades, and it might work for a couple more.

As long as Congress doesn’t muck it up again.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanal.../#7c0229462171

Trump Plans to Shift Infrastructure Funding to Cities, States and Business

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Discussing GAS TAX.

Thread title:

California Legislature votes to raise gas taxes for road repairs and transit