(PART ONE IS HERE)

The immediate silver bullet that is being bantered about by liberals and Gov. Pawlenty is that raising the gas tax will miraculously fund all transportation needs. Nothing could be further from the truth however.

In order to raise enough new funds from the gas tax to seriously fund road repairs, you’d have to raise the tax to the point where the public would suffer financially (if we aren’t already from high gas prices). As the price of gas gets higher, most Minnesotans find themselves already struggling to fill up. Now add an additional, 5, 10, or 15 cents and there would be major changes in driving patterns.

During the recent debate over raising the gas tax (oh and keep in mind, keeping bridges fom collapsing was not on the rhetorical radar screen of the DFL, it was ALL ABOUT MASS TRANSIT), the real cost of the tax increase was described by the opponents as how it would affect the Minnesota family and their monthly budget. The left didn’t care, they wanted more funding, even though, the highway funds were flush with cash, and the gas tax already collects hundreds of millions in revenue.

Did I mention that the state of Minnesota currently spends $35.5 billion a year? It is implausible that there is not already enough money in the state treasury to fund real transportation needs. The problem so far has been that the left has highjacked the priority scale and somehow, education, health care insurance, and fancy schmancy trains for their districts have become life and death situations, and public safety in the form of safe and adequate roads, are a political football not taken seriously.

Find me one instance of the DFL raising the issue of the 35W bridge being in trouble. The State Government, and MNDOT in particular are full of left leaning bureaucrats who actually set the agenda for those departments. Where was Sen. Pogemiller? Where were the other DFL leaders? Heck, where was former Gov. Ventura, or his Transportation Commissioner El Tinklengerg? When and where did these people raise concerns and offer real solutions to solve the problem….. oh yeah, they didn’t.

I oppose an increase to the gas tax. We already collect more than enough money to put a serious dent in the so-called lack of transportation funding. According to The Tax Policy Center (a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution) Minnesota collected $651,472,000 in gas taxes.

And here’s a report from our State Government that notes $629 million raised from the gas taxes in 2006 after refunds. The report also goes into the breakdown of where that goes, and surprise surprise, not all of it goes to funding the roads the gas is consumed on.

Before politicians like Pawlenty and the DFLers or left leaning pundits who couldn’t even wait for the dust to settle convince you that “the only way” we can deal with the transportation funding gap is to raise the gas tax, MAKE THEM EXPLAIN TO YOU WHERE THEY HAVE FRITTERED AWAY ALL THE TAX REVENUE ALREADY COLLECTED OUR VEHICLE TAXES, INCLUDING THE GAS TAX.

Before the money grubbing folks who simply want to make Government bigger not better convince you that the only way to solve the problem and prevent it in the future is to raising taxes, make them fully dedicate the money already taken via the gas tax to roads and bridges that the gas would be consumed on.

Let transportation taxes fund transportation needs. Mass transit is a want that cannot take priority over roads, highways, but more importantly bridges like it has been. Sure, busses are a needed item, but NEVER at the expense of safe and adequate roads. Buses are quite cheap, and well, they need good roads too. We could add thousands of busses for the price of just one light rail, plus still fund the infrastructure needs of our roads, bridges, and highway needs so that the majority of Minnesotans get the help they pay for.

I would advise Pawlenty and the Republicans to push for 100% of the gas tax to go straight to roads and bridges BEFORE any consideration of an increase. Heck, this would be a great time for a Constitution Amendment letting voters decide where the money should go.

We already collect enough gas tax money, we just need to focus the spending on it.

Let’s fully dedicate 100% of the gas tax revenues to roads and bridges immediately, and long before the greedy social engineers who have been siphoning off funds for special interest pet social compliancy projects like trains to nowhere, can get a cut off the top.

I implore people to sit back and demand accountability from the people who have been spending tens of billions the last few years, and never once batted an eye about spending a billion dollars on a train to an airport, or a few hundred million on one to the middle of nowhere. All the while, our highways were not only falling behind, they were off their own radar.

We have enough money in St./ Paul to fund the priorities. The problem is that the people charged with divying up the money properly have skewed visions of what those priorities are. This is where the people could take their state government back. No more urban elite control. Oh and this plan of mine would not stop the trains.

I’d even support a local levy taxing option on gas (put before voters during a general election ONLYno specials!!!!) so that if Minneapolis and St. Paul want to build the Central Corridor, they could seek the funds from their voters who would use the system. Or if some other municipality or County wanted to upgrade a highway or whatever, they could seek local funds from those who would use it.

(AAA’s Note: If Pawlenty reverses course on the gas tax it will be political suicide. It will be a potential admission of guilt, or at least potential blame for all the finger pointing that is flying around. Do not do it Governor. I have provided an alternative, I feel winning, plan for you and the Republicans. If you won’t listen, maybe Rep. Seifert is listening.)

We have plenty of money that the State Government has taken away from us in the name of transportation. It is now high time that they get their act together and spend it in the ways needed, not wanted.

Transportation revenue needs to be spent on real transportation needs.

(Addition)
I would be remiss not to point out the flaw in thinking that simply raising the existing gas tax, and using the current formulas, revenue will dry up rapidly. As the CAFE (miles per gallon) standards keep going up and up, and our vehicles use less and less gas and fuel, we’ll all pay less in gas taxes. Hence there will be less paid.

But if we fully dedicate what we do get currently, we’ll get a much more matching revenue stream with the demand for better roads, and have the chance to catch up in he short term.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 6:41 am and is filed under MN Governor, Minnesota, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.