I may have my disagreements with the Legislative Black Caucus over the Apologizing-for-Slavery issue, but I have to commend the group for clear thinking about transportation funding. According to Michael Hardy with the Times-Dispatch, the Caucus proposed a two-year, $2 billion road-financing plan that relies primarily upon a 10-cent-a-gallon increase in the gas tax, supplemented by $500 million from budget surpluses, an increase in vehicle registration fees and revenues from the tax on auto-insurance premiums.
It is axiomatic that I oppose dumping more money into Virginia’s transportation system until that system is fixed. However, if you’re going to dump money into a broken system, do in a way that causes the least damage possible. The Black Legislative Caucus plan is vastly preferable to the Republican plan in that (a) it is transparent — for the most part, people are aware how they’re paying the tax and what it goes to, and (b) it is a user-pays tax.
Del. Kenneth R. Melvin, D-Portsmouth, explained the logic: “If you use the roads, you pay for their construction and maintenance,” he said. The proposal also would capture dollars from out-of-state motorists traveling in Virginia.
I’ve said it over and over, and I will say it until I’m blue in the face: By increasing the cost of driving in a very transparent way, the gas tax doesn’t just fund new construction: It creates creates a concrete incentive for people to drive less. The impact on driving may be modest, but it beats subsidizing driving, which the GOP plan would do.
In the long run, as hybrids, electrics and fuel-cells enter the marketplace, the gas tax is not viable. But of all the road-financing schemes on the table, it is the least bad. And it establishes a precedent — the user pays — that could lead to a mileage-based user fee and congestion tolls down the road.