Posted on 05/21/2005 8:56:17 AM PDT by agitator
Oregon tests novel mileage tax
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The program is the first step in a long-term plan to replace the state's gasoline tax, which pays for about 40 percent of Oregon 's road projects. As in many states, Oregon officials are worried gas tax revenues won’t be able to keep up with the rising costs of road building, especially with improved mileage from both traditional and hybrid cards.
Driver advocates and environmentalists said they will be watching the new program to make sure that it charges drivers fairly and that it does not give consumers an excuse to keep driving gas-guzzling cars.
Testing will start in September when the state transportation department plans to equip 20 privately owned cars with electronic odometers to record their mileage at gas stations. When drivers fill up, specially equipped gas pumps will read the mileage and charge 1.2 cents for every mile driven instead of the state's tax of 24 cents per gallon of gas.
The cars also will have Global Positioning Systems (GPS) so drivers will not be charged for driving outside state borders -- the tax is only meant to be applied for use of Oregon roads. Tracking cars' locations also could allow extra fees for traveling in congested traffic areas or during rush hours. Drivers also could be charged less if their car is more fuel-efficient, said James Whitty, manager of the Oregon Department of Transportation division that is overseeing the project.
A bigger, year-long test of 280 cars is scheduled to start in March 2006. After that, the state transportation department will make recommendations to the Legislature on whether to phase in the new-fangled tax statewide, possibly over 20 years to ease privacy concerns and spread out the costs of the new technology.
Elliott Eki, spokesman for the Oregon AAA, said the state absolutely needs to find a new source of money to build roads and bridges. But charging drivers more for driving in congested areas could force more people to use neighborhood streets to avoid extra fees.
Chris Hagerbaumer, a transportation specialist with the nonprofit Oregon Environmental Council, said the state should impose such a new tax slowly. "The issue is, if we make a flat switch, we would lose the incentives for people to purchase fuel-efficient cars," she said.
The mileage tax was the main recommendation of a 2001 state task force studying new ways to pay for road projects, which rely heavily on gasoline taxes. Those fees lost much of their purchasing power as the inflation of the 1970s and 1980s increased the costs of road projects. At the same time, carmakers began to slowly improve fuel efficiency, so that drivers were, in effect, paying less to use the roads, the task force found.
Oregon raised its gas taxes six times from 1981 to 1991 to keep highway funds flush, but politicians have been unable to muster the political will for any increases since then.
In the next decade, gas tax revenues in Oregon are projected to level off, then permanently decline as rising gas prices push consumers to drive less or buy more efficient hybrid electric or other alternatively fueled cars.
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) has said his state will become the 10th to adopt more stringent auto pollution standards than the federal government, standards likely to be achieved through greater fuel efficiency.
The number of hybrid vehicles in Oregon grew by 103 percent from 2003 to 2004, the second-highest percentage increase in the nation after New Jersey, according to R.L. Polk & Co., an automotive data-collection firm. The number of hybrids increased across the nation by 81 percent over the same period, the analysts found.
Send your comments on this story to: letters@stateline.org. Selected reader feedback will be posted in the Letters to the editor section.
Contact Eric Kelderman at: ekelderman@stateline.org
That's the thing that keeps amazing me over and over again... that we put up with this crap!!
Precisely!
What kills us here in Oregon is the extended use of studded tires which ruin the expensive freeways we already have.
I am impressed with Oregon. I would have thought California would have come up with this novel way to screw their citizens long before any other state. I guess the congratulations for being first goes to Oregon.
I thought California would have been first because they are constantly urging their citizens to purchase higher mileage transportation. The higher mileage cars help to reduce the California pollution. Many good citizens now drive small, often uncomfortable and less safe, cars to help reduce pollution. However, there is an economic benefit to being a good citizen in that they enjoy a lower cost of transportation.
It now appears that at least Oregon has discovered that high mileage cars pay less highway tax because they purchase less fuel.
"You guys got a long way to go to beat Maine"
Actually, when income tax, property tax, licensing, fees, etc are totalled - Oregon is one of the most expensive.
Are people really this stupid to ask for this crap?
Yes. Until one realizes the conclusion that more than 50% of the population of the country is dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to politics and social policy, you go through life confused and wondering how we always get screwed. Once you accept that, things make a lot more sense. It doesn't offer anything in the way of hope, but at least you don't consistently feel like the train has left the station without you...
Everybody wants to move. Great...I'm stuck in communist New England, and I want to move, as well. Where do we go? I was looking at Idaho, but its proximity to Oregon in tandem with all the Californians flooding into the state has made me take a long second look at that idea. East Tennessee was great, but the area is being overrun with illegal aliens. We are running out of places to go.
Plenty of money for that comes from gasoline, commercial and registration taxes. Cut the waste first, then talk to me about taxes. I know of what I speak too, I've been a contractor to Caltrans for nigh on 15 years now. A mileage based, GPS monitored tax is NOTHING but a control and extra revenue issue...
All those brainwashed socialists being churned out by the public schools and universities.
Based on their $0.24 per gallon VS their $0.012 per mile on my gas guzzling work truck I would have paid $134 tax @ $.24 a gallon VS. $84 @ $0.012 per mile last year....Sounds good to me.
Yes. Every one of you guys that protests a hike in the gas tax brings this reality that much closer.
BullS**T. they get plenty of money now, they just don't have the wherewithal to spend it on road work rather than a host of other touchy feely crap. You add up the stuff like soundwalls, Aerially Deposited Lead work, Naturally Occuring Asbestos management, bike lanes, carpool lanes, mass transit authorities, etc... and you have enough money to pave some whole states. Hell, just the political jacking off over the Bay Bridge here has ballooned the cost from 1.2 billion to around 6 billion and counting.
They retrofit bridges here (for hundreds of millions of dollars apiece) in the intrim while they build a replacement and then turn around and tear the old one down. Hell, at the least, they could leave the old one up with a "disclaimer" sign on it and have less congestion after the fact.
They retrofitted an ~1.5 mile structure in San Francisco a while back for about 17 million dollars and then immediately decided to tear it down because the neighborhood ended up voting that they didn't like looking at it! They paid for and environmental evaluation before the retrofit (about 100K) and then paid for another one for demolition because the engineers couldn't be bothered to dig the old one up!
Freeway work is not only a pork jobs program, the decisions on what to build, tear down, and how to manage it, are floated amongs a fractious populace who doesn't know crap about what the hell they're making decisions about, and there's multiple groups pushing to get the people to make descisions that should be left up to engineers.
You get the crap and waste out of freeway construction and maintenance and then you can come back and blubber about needing more money, until then, kiss off...
By Eric Kelderman, Stateline.org Staff Writer
I would call a 'mileage tax' many things, tyrannical, corrupt, invasion of privacy, greedy on the part of government, BUT I would NOT call it 'NOVEL'!! Eric Kelderman NEEDS to be committed to an insane asylum as soon as possible.
so state visitors do not have to pay tax?
Sounds like a selective impact fee.
If anything this will make a hack market AND it will hurt the states ecconomy since filling up at the pump will be a roulette game.
Stupid like a fox... The gas pump will read something that tells the pump how many miles have been driven. It would be simple for them to add a code for the type of car or truck being driven. So for your compact, economy box, the tax may only be 0.012/mile, while a Hummer might wind up getting taxed at 0.05 a mile, or some other crazy amount to punnish the drivers of big cars and trucks.
Mark
For pete's sake, a replacement battery for a hybrid can run 2 to 3 grand! Where's the dang savings? You're robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The really fun thing about this proposal is that not only will it allow the state to determine the miles driven, they can also determine the speed at which those miles were driven. Presto! Another way to tax your a**.
Why? The people should vote no taxes at all on the road and bridges.
Then the state doesn't have to fix them. As they get worse and worse people will drive less and less problem solved and save money and gas.
The only ones who will drive are those who have to.The people will drive less and slower. They won't have to be taxed to death.
Those who need to get some where will find a way.
Maybe then the people will get their priorities in order and force their wasteful politicians to do the same and spend their money more wisely.
Every time our leaders yell the world is coming to an end unless we give them more money,we give it to them.
As long as our leaders both federal and state can keep going to the well for every conceivable pet cause or project,or special interest group, things are going to get worse and worse.
The only way to kill this monster is to starve it.
The only way we will ever get back to an efficient small less intrusive government the Fathers intended, is for the money to run out or be cut off.
Otherwise it will keep growing,wasting and spending more and more.
Hey I live in Bend, Or. guess I can address this problem based on personal experience. Did you ever pass Highway workers with their state rigs (all newer vehicles) and you pass a job where there are 5 or 10 guys (big money makers) standing around talking and pointing as there is one runt guy with a shovel or rake and everyone is telling him what to do ? These guys get paid no matter how much time they put on the project or how much work they do, again like the Feds, it is a welfare situation where they get their salary no matter what they do and we have to pay for this more and more. If it were private industry doing the work, they post a bond and are regulated so that the job is done right. I wonder how well the state is checked after their jobs and arent the inspectors getting paid by the same folks as the ones who's work they are checking ? Seems like an inherint conflict of interest as far as the work is concerned and maybe its time for private industry to take over the work of the State. IMO private industry can do the job MUCH better and with less expense.
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