Road funding?

by Scott Mooneyham, Capitol Press Association, published in Greenville Daily Reflector, April 5, 2014.

As state transportation officials take up the knotty issue of how to pay for roads in the future, they better first understand the political thicket in which state legislators have left them.

Members of the state Board of Transportation again this week discussed how North Carolina can pay for road construction and repair as more fuel-efficient cars and alternative-energy vehicles chip away at the dedicated gas tax that now goes for that purpose.

According to Department of Transportation estimates, gas consumption in the state will decline from 5.6 billion gallons in 2007 to 5.1 billion in 2025, representing about a 9-percent drop. That means fewer dollars collected from a gas tax based on gallons consumed.

Meanwhile, the state population, and the number of motorists, will rise. The population is projected to increase by 2 million people over that period.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that those numbers eventually won’t work.

A report received by a committee of the Board of Transportation contemplates, among other ideas, a vehicle-mile tax as an alternative or addition to the gas tax.

It’s not a new idea. Transportation officials and legislators have been talking about a vehicle-mile tax for a while.

The report says a half-penny -per-mile tax is projected to raise $495 million per year, while costing the average motorists $6.25 per month.

Besides the obvious -- that new taxes are not popular -- the notion of tracking mileage driven by motorists has always been problematic.

To do it accurately, the state would have to force GPS-type devices on cars so that miles driven within North Carolina’s borders could be distinguished between those driven in other states.

That tracking, though, would been by a lot people as an invasion of privacy.

Collecting the mileage driven during annual inspections wouldn’t show how many miles were accumulated in other states.

Transportation officials, though, sound pretty intent on figuring out something soon, even if the McCrory administration has already committed to holding off on any revenue ideas until after a 25-year transportation plan is released later this year.

“We always thought we had a few more years, and now I don’t think we feel that way any more,” BOT member Cheryl McQueary told The News & Observer of Raleigh recently.

McQueary and her fellow board members may need to change their feelings.

Regardless of the need, when legislators passed a major, top-heavy tax overhaul without addressing the transportation dilemma, they expended a tremendous amount of political capital. To believe that they could pass another major tax measure anytime soon, especially one that might fall heavily on the middle class, is unrealistic.

Meanwhile, so much of the focus of transportation officials on user-related taxes ignores a basic fact: Everyone in the state, whether they drive or not, depends on a good transportation network.

Businesses need roads to get goods to market; consumers need roads to get those goods.

There is nothing wrong with bringing the use of broader taxes into the discussion.

 http://www.reflector.com/opinion/mooneyham/mooneyham-road-funding-2437393