Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Arkansas Politics Highways: No free lunch
Posted by Max Brantley on Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 4:44 PM
Jason Tolbert provides some coverage of the blue-ribbon group studying highway funding.
He catches some plain old common sense from Sen. John Paul Capps, who says new tax money will be required for new highway money. There's no way to slice more for highways out of the existing pie.
There you go, like it or not. Is the answer a sales tax for highways? A change in the formula for taxing fuel sales? Nobody but me is mentioning a new levy for heavy trucks, but they should.
The commission's options discussed so far are linked in Tolbert's item. They include sales taxes of varying amounts to support bond issues and also the enduring idea to steal a portion of existing sales tax revenues for the same purpose (the emphasis is that they'd only take the tax on automotive goods, but this is just a sham for stealing existing tax base at someone else's expense). The ideas have already drawn an unfavorable comment from Gov. Mike Beebe.
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Comments (12)
Showing 1-12 of 12
Vehicle registration costs should be a funtion if it's size, weight and probably mpg.
The heavier, the larger the poorer its mpg the more it should pay in registration. Everything from a bicycle to a cement mixer.
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Dan Flowers said the other day that it’ll take $23 billion to fix our roads and that he can only see $4 billion on his radar. Said we’re gonna have to have federal funding to git ‘er all done. Meanwhile, our bad roads are a big part of the fact that Arkansas averages 1.81 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, the 5th highest fatality average in the country. National average is 1.25 deaths per 100 million miles.
Since a lot of the damage in this area is a direct result of the over-weight trucks in the gas drilling operation, start by adjusting the severance tax and dedicate a portion to roads. They will be trucks running as long as the wells are running to take away the water, oil, and frac solution that comes up with the gas.
Also, take the state tax on a gallon of gas and diesel back when it was first added and figure out what the tax would be now if it was indexed to go with the price. Yes, I'll pay more but you have to assume that vehicles that use gas or diesel do use the roads. And adjust the truck tax to account for the wear damage.
Sooner or later the bills will have to be paid and there are two choices-the trucks that really tear up the road or the rest of the citizens of the state. There isn't a third place to find the money. Forget the feds except for the gas tax rebate.
Why would we tax the people to pay for infrastructure used up by corporations? Big trucks don't pay their fair share now, and the state is talking about raising MY taxes? No way.
And it's not just 18-wheelers. Highway 300 toward Pinnacle Mountain is being destroyed by dump trucks going back and forth from a dirt farm / fill location. The dirt farmer and the dump truck owner are making money by over-using public infrastructure -- and again, the state wants ME to pay more taxes? No way.
The state gas tax was 22 to 26% of the average price of gasoline from 1949 to 1977. Now days it is less than 10% of the average price. Our state reps and senators don't have the nerve to raise it that much no matter how bad the roads are. The roads are getting worse everyday and until John Q Public stands up and demands something has to be done they aren't going to raise the tax. So just be ready to ride on roads that keep getting rougher each year until the public begs them to do something.
I like that idea Ron, especially when it comes to taxing heavier vehicles more.
I am SOMEWHAT sympathetic to soccer moms but at the same time, if we want to get serious about climate change, people either need to stop having children or at least have 2, one to replace mom and one to replace dad.
RB,
The idea of taxes based on mpg is absurd. A vehicle already pays more taxes if its fuel economy is low because its owner has to buy more gas and therefore already pays more taxes.
As for the death rate and road conditions I would like to see someone prove that one. I really don't recall any accidents related to road condition unless they were weather related. There are accidents that resulted from driving too fast for road conditions but this is the driver's fault.
Remember, the highway department is in business to do one thing and that is to build and maintain roads. For the AHD the more they build the more they need to build.
"As for the death rate and road conditions I would like to see someone prove that one."
Click on the link below and then call ole Dan Flowers, director of the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department. He’d probably like for you to find somebody who can prove otherwise.
http://www.arkansashighways.com/
Well, the entire state can take the Faulkner County approach and just let them go back to gravel. The county has no way to keep up with the highway damage to county roads caused by all the traffic related to the Fayetteville shale drilling and Judge Preston Scroggin said that they will wait until the roads have been reduce to gravel and give a new base for adding blacktop once the damage has subsided. I think the state has already taken this approach on I-30 south of Little Rock. AHD is constantly working on highway 107 from Enola to Quitman. That's why an increase in the severance tax should be where we start and take off that allowance for the first few years when the actual well output is the highest. That was a give-away to the industry.
A driver of a high-mpg vehicle pays the same rate per gallon of gas that a driver of a low-mpg vehicle.
If either vehicle tears up more road per gallon of gas because it weighs more, then they are actually getting a free ride and not paying their fair share.
If we are talking highway maintenance, the taxes paid should be proportional to how much highway you use up. That seems to be primarily a function of miles driven and how much your vehicle weighs. You capture the first with taxes at the pump, kinda sorta, but the second factor is not taken into account.
Both drivers pay the same rate but the low-mpg driver buys gas more often therefore they pay more taxes.
What if you don't drive on state highways but you just putter around in town? Why should your tax money that you pay on gas be used to build another highway on the other side of the state. As I said before the more they build the more they want to build. There is not enough money in the state to build all the highways the AHD says are needed. Finish the ones being built, repair the ones that are built and if a new one must be built then make it a toll road.
Eliminate the sales tax exemption on motor fuels, then the taxes collected will fluctuate with the price per gallon. It will also make it harder for station operators to skim the sales taxes that they are collecting on beer sales by reporting those dollars each month as (non-taxable) fuel sales and pocketing thousands of dollars each month paid by beer purchasers that never get remitted to the DF&A.
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