What are you talking about? This scheme was the brainchild of a Republican senator (Bruce Starr from Hillsboro) and the task force that is putting it into place was created by a Republican led legislature.
Wanna bet?
But you know, taxing by the mile instead of by the gallon would be more fair. Roads are designed and built according to the demand that is expected to be placed on them, and any vehicle occupying a lane, regardless of the amount of fuel it uses, contributes equally to that expense with any other. Most maintenance is needed because of time and weather regardless of use, though any idiot can see the wear and tear that is obviously caused by heavy trucks, and they should and do pay proportionally more because of that.
So for the average schmuck going to get the groceries, to work, going fishing, or to the Saturday market, in his or her Hummer, Geo, Prius, Gizmo, motorcycle or bicycle, paying exactly the same rate for each and every mile traveled upon a public thoroughfare, sounds perfectly reasonable to me, as long as it completely replaces the gas tax and is as nearly revenue neutral as possible.
Now on the other issue of government tracking with the GPS, here is how the Oregon system, as proposed, is set up: The GPS device is programmed to record distance traveled within the state, and to discount distance traveled outside of the state. The data is to be be collected at each fill-up at participating fueling stations in the test markets. The promise has been made that these GPS devices are not capable of tracking a vehicle's movement other than to record miles traveled outside the state so those miles can be discounted. But a reality check is in order. First, a GPS receiver is just that, a receiver. By itself, it does not and can not ever transmit real time data about an individual unit's whereabouts. But, it can be programmed to record a precise itinerary and communicate with other devices which can, within their own specific capability, exchange that data with other devices. Whether or not that could be done in real time would depend on whether such capability exists within those other connected devices. The main point here is that the government's statement that it would not be possible to use it's data collection system for tracking specific whereabouts at particular times is demonstrably false. By necessity, the capability is designed into the hardware. The software will control what it will actually do, so whether or not you like this has to boil down to who you trust.
As for me, I like the idea of paying by the mile under the conditions I stated above, but I am not in favor of the technology that is being used to collect the data. Why are we expected to trust the state? Should the state not be expected to trust us? Right now the state doesn't mandate that I buy all my gas in Oregon, and my city has it's own tax and doesn't require it either, but for practical reasons, that's where I get most of it. For other practical reasons, I maintain a working odometer, and I would be perfectly capable of truthfully reporting it's reading on a quarterly return. Thousands of folks already do it for weight mile taxes on heavy trucks, and if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me.
The only extra expense then would be for the majority of bicycles that don't have odometers. But they can be had for ten or fifteen bucks and that seems reasonable to me, since they have gotten a free ride for so long. I say let's do it.