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Posted on 05/03/2007 11:11:41 AM PDT by JZelle
So D.C. Council members are entertaining the novel idea of placing tollbooths at the city's entryways and sticking a hand in the pocket of those who opt to live in the suburbs because of lower taxes, affordable housing, safer neighborhoods and stronger public schools.
This is a sign of resignation, of being unable to fix that which is broken, of appealing to those who might choose to live in the city if it were not so dysfunctional. Increasing the tax base with a significant bump in population would ease the budgetary gap that perpetually taunts the city's lawmakers. Or perhaps not.
No matter how much money is dumped into city coffers, our lawmakers find creative ways to spend it. That is a hallmark of most politicians. They never tire of spending our money before devising more strategies to take yet more of our money.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Not to worry. We’ll pay our tolls like the Mayor-For-Life pays his taxes. Rarely if ever.
Virgina should put up toll boioths coming in to Virgina and only charge DC residents.
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What would the reaction of these D.C. city council members if the toll discourages people from visiting D.C.? And as a result of fewer visitors and tourists, the tax revenues from other sources such as sales tax goes down?
And how the heck can this be administered?
There are so many small side streets on Western, Eastern, and Southern Avenues on the Maryland border of D.C. that they would have to create literally hundreds of toll booths and checkpoints to enforce this. If they had toll booths just on major roads, people would try to avoid by using the side streets. So realisitically, they would have to block off hundreds of streets to do this.
And then after all that, what if the revenues fall below projections? What if the costs of enforcement and employees to run the toll booths exceed the revenues generated?
When I worked in DC, I got to work closely with some folks who had worked for the District. Also got to interact with some of their senior employees. Lord have mercy!
Times changes; taxes don’t.
You’ve got it wrong. DC Government (along with hundreds of other municipalities in this country) have been “turned out” by the easy money pimps from the likes of Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. - their partner in the operation of the District’s Red Light cameras. All DC Gubmint have to do is take your picture and send you a bill. Cha ching.
OK, I’ll be the dissenting opinion..
STFU and take the backroads! Sorry but highways aren’t a constitutionally protected right.
Just as you pay more for the convienence of buying cigarettes @ 7-11 you have to pay for the convienence of using a highway.
(with that said, I think most tolls are a crock since they exist to ‘pay for the road maintenance’ yet most toll roads I travel are full of potholes, have poor signage and the rest stop sucks. WTF is my toll money going to?!?!)
Do tell!
And what do you propose when they suggest putting tolls on the backroads?
It's not about constitutionally protected rights, or lack thereof. It's about getting raped by our gov't officials.
I’ll continue to live in Virginia (land of smoking in bars and lower taxes) and use my pre-tax Metro card, thanks.
IMO, you’re kind of dumb to drive into the city anyway.
Ironically, I’m wondering what about those poor (financially) individuals who live in DC and work in the ‘burbs? They’re working hard to price all the poor people out of DC and into Maryland.
The section of I-295 that goes thru the southeast corner of the District (east of the Anacostia River) is a continuous automated speed trap. They set the speed limit at 40-50, place a police car with a radar activated camera on the shoulder and send out the bills. “Just passing by” is now a DC money machine... The DC government can’t educate the population with one of the most expensive school systems in the country and now we learn that they can’t even make sure the fire hydrant work... Yet we hear how they are discriminated against because they aren’t a state, don’t have a voting congressman or two senators. And they just keep electing Marion Barry despite a personal history of crime and corruption because????
Per Claire Wolf’s terminology, it would be ‘time’:
http://www.conservativeforum.org/authquot.asp?ID=1373
OR everyone could get AWD cars and start making their own ‘roads’. This is America, we’ll get creative ;-)
No but the Interstate Commerce Act says, states can’t put up toll booths at their border. The reason that all of the Potomac belongs to Maryland is that Virginia gave it away in exchange for the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay...planning to charge all ships a toll going to Baltimore. Until the ICA stopped that.
Not an individual right, however, the U.S.Constitution grants the Federal govenment the power to create and oversee interstate transportation networks (Article I, Section 8). And since DC is not a state, but a Federal entity, it may well have the power to tax these types of roads as well as the DC only roadways.
That said, I suspect the laws that created the interstate highway system would govern whether or not DC has the power or not to place a tax on a Federally used road. Furthermore, these laws would have to specifically state that DC is allowed to tax the roadways, if not, DC does not have the power to do such. Why, because the begining of Article I, Section 8 reads as follows:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Thus, it is Congress's power that must be given up in law, or granted to DC in order for them to have the rights to tax the roads going in and out of DC in the first place.
I never knew that. I thought it had something to do with the King of England and land grants or something.
I don’t object, in principle to tolls - I view tolls as user fees, a legitimate alternative to taxes.
Its when the government wastes the tax money and then wants more money that it bothers me.
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