Does The Governor’s Transportation Plan Make Any Sense?

Right now one of the hot items being discussed by the Virginia General Assembly is Governor McDonnell’s plan to fund transportation projects. 

The Republican Governor is calling for a hike in the state sales tax by about 0.8 cents.  All of the revenue generated from this increase would in turn go to fund transportation projects to the tune of $3.1 billion.  However motorists would actually get a break as the Governor’s plan also calls for eliminating the state’s tax on gasoline. 

 How does that make any sense?

As a conservative, in my mind, the best kind of tax should be correlated as closely as possible with the government service being used by the individual.  In the case of the gas tax, that’s easy.  If you use the roads, you pay the tax.  The more you use the roads, the more taxes you pay.

That’s how it should be.

Here’s the problem though.  While vehicles have become more fuel efficient over the past few decades, gas taxes have remained relatively flat.  This has led to declining revenues for transportation projects across the country.

If you ask me, the obvious solution is to raise gas taxes accordingly.

But such moves are politically unpopular, especially if you are a Republican like McDonnell. 

So then the solution becomes to raise taxes on everything else, thereby penalizing all of the citizens who either don’t use the roads at all, or use them a lot less by making use of car pools, or public transportation.

Moving from a tax that is closely correlated to individual use of government services to a blatant and indiscriminate tax on everything regardless of how much you use an individual service is simply unfair.

It also goes against conservative principals.  I would urge all of my fellow Virginians to urge the Governor to re-consider the faulty logic of this plan.