One of the big stories in state transportation issues this past year is the state's repealing the automatic gas-tax increase. As most of you probably know, the gas tax used to increase automatically every year (indexed to inflation).
I thought it was interesting that the supporters (in favor of repealing the automatic increase) include small-government conservatives (Lower taxes!) and pro-environment liberals (e.g. Spencer Black). I'm kind of split on this: Rep. Black's argument is that forcing the legislature to debate the increase in gas tax every year means they will have to justify the cost/benefit every road-building project. Which I'm in favor of (instead of just having a big pot of money to throw at the road-building lobby). The why-does-it-cost-so-much-to-commute-50-miles-a-day-in-my-SUV? crowd supported this under the illusion that this will somehow contain gas prices. Some of the 'lower-taxes' conservatives used this phony argument to gain support. (Dream on. $60/barrel? we're just getting started). What concerns me is that that the road-building lobby is still very strong, and that they will be able to coerce the state leg. into the same amount of spending. What happens at the end of the year, and the bill comes due, and the transportation fund is empty? Will they short-change education or the Stewardship fund? will they start cutting back on the already meager bike/ped appropriations? Zweifel has an editorial about the power of the road-building lobby: http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=69456&ntpid=2 _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
