No matter what the price of gas is, we need a long-term solution to road funding NOW!
Michigan road funding: Will spike in gas prices stall long-term plan?
LANSING, MI — Long-term road funding talks appear to be running on fumes as Michigan lawmakers look to move key bills before leaving Lansing for summer break.
Republican state Rep. Wayne Schmidt of Traverse City, who chairs the House Transportation Committee and has been working on legislation to generate new revenue through wholesale fuel taxes and increased registration fees, said Tuesday that a recent spike in gasoline prices has complicated a policy discussion already fraught with political implications.
“With gas prices sitting at over $4 per gallon, everyone gets a little skittish about doing something that could be perceived as raising taxes,” Schmidt said after his committee met without approving road funding bills that have been on the agenda for weeks. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that we need to come up with somewhere between a billion and a billion and a half (dollars) to fix the transportation network in our state. Is it moving as fast as I’d like it to? No, but we’re not giving up on it yet.”
Michigan’s average gas prices currently stands at $4.20 per gallon, the highest rate in the contiguous United States and a full 57 cents above the national average. Because the state also charges sales tax on fuel purchases, motorists here already pay more at-pump taxes than drivers in most other states.
The politics of high gas prices were on full display Tuesday at the state Capitol, where House Democrats demanded that Attorney General Bill Schuette investigate possible price fixing just minutes after Schuette’s office put out a press release indicating that it constantly monitors gas prices and profit margins. Experts say there’s little lawmakers can do, attributing the spike to supply shortages at refineries serving Michigan and neighboring states.
While high gas prices aren’t helping, Schmidt’s road-funding package has been stalled in committee for quite some time.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has already indicated that Medicaid expansion is his main legislative priority at the moment, and Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville has said his chamber is unlikely to vote on roads before summer break.
The governor, in his original executive budget recommendation, proposed raising $1.2 billion a year in new revenue for Michigan roads through a combination of taxes and fees. But lawmakers recently returned to him a budget that included roughly $350 million in one-time surplus money for Michigan roads but did not include long-term funding.
Schmidt has been holding hearings on funding bills with hopes that legislative leaders and the governor would strike a deal capable of winning bipartisan support. While he previously hoped for action by June, on Tuesday he began discussing a September deadline, pointing out that if a final deal were to include a sales tax component, it would require voter approval at the next statewide election.
Politically, Schmidt acknowledged, the road to long-term road funding could get even more bumpy as the 2014 election cycle approaches.
“We’ve kicked it down the road for 16 years,” he said, referring to the last time the legislature voted to raise gasoline taxes — back in 1997. “We’ve been tackling it in this committee, specifically, for five or six months.
“The window gets a little smaller, but we haven’t given up. We still have July and August, two good months, and while we might not be meeting formally in session, I guarantee you staff on both sides of the aisle are going to be working on this.”
