http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/l...ny-linews-print

I consider this ludacris. Unless you can name a TOTALLY self sufficient community, all people make use of the roads in one form or another. You go to the store to buy milk and it got to the shelf on a truck that drove on a road. Unless of course you a part of the farm community that generated the milk, in which case you earn your living by being able to transport your product over the roads to the marketplace. You got a fire to put out, the truck has to get to your house on a road, same thing if you call the police. Want to get your cable TV service upgraded or have your phone and power lines serviced after a storm, the technicians and repair crews have to use the roads to get to your house.

But wait - you live in the city, take the train to work, shopping is convenient, whatever you buy you carry home, you don't drive - you don't "use" the roads. Doesn't matter - the building you work at had to have all it's materials and supplies transported there for construction - on the roads. You work on the 22nd floor but the elevator is broken today, guess how the repair guy is going to get there with all his tools and repair parts. Same thing with police, fire, commerce everything. With one exception. The private citizen has no way of recovering the loss of this fee. Truckers can write it off on their taxes, the community pays for it's police, fire, repair and infrastructure costs by collecting taxes from the ENTIRE community. Commerce can pass the cost off to the consumer in the price, or write it off on their taxes. The private citizen, the car driver, the commuter and the weekend shopper to the mall have no such recourse. They are the ones not only paying the tax itself, but paying the fee for those who have the ability to pass that fee along to someone else.

Q:
Is it appropriate to charge users an additional fee for something that is already being paid for as a whole by the community at large?

Would you support the Oregon version that replaces the gas tax with the road fee, would you support some other variation of elimination of a current system in favor of this new system?

Would you support it in a conditional form, specifying that the revenue must be spent fully on, and dedicated only to, maintaining roads?

Is this just another form of double taxation?

Is there any merit to the "Big Brother" suppositions at the end of the article?

Is it appropriate to charge users an additional fee for something that is already being paid for as a whole by the community at large?

That depends on what you're paying for. I don't agree with the proposal in the article for reasons expressed later.

However, some states have some major highways that are toll roads. The tolls were put in place to pay for the building of and maintenance of that roadway. The roadway usually being a VERY convenient stretch to travel. Take for example the New Jersey Parkway. Prior to the Parkway (before my time so the "antiques" around here from that area might correct me ), you only had highways. Highways, that as the population grew began to have more and more traffic lights. If one was to try to take free highways in New Jersey from the north to the south it would likely take 100 times as long, and easily 5 times the gas. People pay the tolls because they want the convenience. Furthermore those toll vary depending on what you are driving, so that those vehicles that do the most damage to the roads (Semi-Trailers and the like) pay more.

The per mile proposal is interesting, but it is a regressive tax if there ever was one. A person earning 100,000.00 a year would pay the same per mile as someone earning $30,000.00 a year. Plus, as you point out, most if not all of the products and services we enjoy use the roads to bring them to us so almost all of the things we pay for, from food to telephone service would go up in price to pay for the new tax. Since consumable goods make up a much greater percentage of the average budget of someone who is poor than someone who is wealthy this tax would have a much deeper effect on the wallet of the working poor then the well-to-do.

People complain about the income tax burden being heavier on the poor them the wealthy. People's opinions differ on the validity of that argument but this tax surely would be a much heavier burden on the poor then the wealthy. Just as Gas Taxes and Property Taxes are now.

Would you support the Oregon version that replaces the gas tax with the road fee, would you support some other variation of elimination of a current system in favor of this new system?

No. It takes away all of the incentives for someone to have a more fuel efficient vehicle that the gas tax helped create and replaces it with a tax that is equally regressive on the poor (In the case of fuel efficient vehicles, the gas tax is less on individual with a fuel efficient vehicle then one with a gas guzzling SUV or older vehicle. With the milage tax, they both pay the same).

Would you support it in a conditional form, specifying that the revenue must be spent fully on, and dedicated only to, maintaining roads?

That is what the Gas taxes were supposed to be in most areas. In my former home state of New Jersey the people were promised that the revenues for casino gambling would only go to programs for the elderly and schools. Then when the lottery was being voted on, they were promised that the casino revenues would only go to programs for the elderly and the lottery revenue would only go to the schools. Further, they were promised that the tolls on roads would only go to the construction cost and maintenance costs of those roads. Before the ink was even dry on each of those pieces of legislation, the state government drafted new legislation to re-direct these revenues to the general fund as well as all sorts of pet projects.

Provisions like this are only as good as the next piece of legislation to change them. In other words, they mean nothing.

Is this just another form of double taxation?

In a sense, but which would you prefer? an income tax and a gas tax, or just an income tax that has to be increased to cover the costs of the operation and maintenance of the roads? Different taxes allow people to better control their budgets to a degree. This particular tax, actually increases the cost of living for everyone who has to commute to a job, a supermarket, a school or a church. It does so in a way that is much more significant and damaging to the budgets of the "have-nots" then the "haves".

Is there any merit to the "Big Brother" suppositions at the end of the article?

Could be. In New Jersey, the state promoted something called "Easy-Pass". It was a electronic device, you put in your car to have your tolls on toll roads recorded and then you would be billed at the end of the month. It was promoted as a way to speedup tolls, simplify expense reporting, and reduce operational cost of the roads (by reducing the number of toll-takers needed).

What people didn't expect was the speeding tickets they got in the mail. When you pass a toll the time and date is recorded. If you pass the next toll to soon, as to show that you had to be speeding, the speed you must have been traveling at is calculated and you get a ticket! Seems like big brother to me.

Is it appropriate to charge users an additional fee for something that is already being paid for as a whole by the community at large?
That depends, of course. If additional monies are needed to effect road repair and maintenance, and the current gas tax isn't cutting it, then one of three things needs to happen. One, raise the gas taxes. Two, replace the gas tax with something (like the user fee) that will raise more revenue. Three, supplement the gas tax with a new tax or user fee.

Would you support the Oregon version that replaces the gas tax with the road fee, would you support some other variation of elimination of a current system in favor of this new system?
I don't support this program for reasons I'll discuss later. If all of the gas taxes are currently going for road construction and repair, and more funds are needed, why not just raise the gas tax? The collection mechanisms are already in place, and if you're averse to paying higher gas prices, you'll find a way to cut down on the amount you travel by car.

Would you support it in a conditional form, specifying that the revenue must be spent fully on, and dedicated only to, maintaining roads?
No. As OverlandSailor pointed out, there are lots of programs that are supposed to go strictly for one thing or another, only to be subverted by the politicians, as soon as they think our backs are turned.

In Florida, for instance, when the Lottery was instituted, the revenue was supposed to be used as an addition to the education system, without reducing the amount budgeted by the state for education. That lasted about two years, before the legislature decided to reduce education spending by the amount of lottery revenue generated, ostensibly to balance the state budget, but even that rationalization didn't last long.

Is there any merit to the "Big Brother" suppositions at the end of the article?
Of course there is. Again, as OS pointed out, New Jersey uses the "EZ-Pass" system there to generate additional revenue in the form of speeding tickets.

Here in Illinois, the system is called "I-Pass", but is nearly identical to the EZ-Pass. They are trying to get more people to use the system by passing legislation that actually doubles the amount a motorist will pay if he pays by cash, instead of the "I-Pass". So, if you have an I-Pass, and the toll is normally a dollar, that's what you pay. If you don't have an I-Pass, and pay by cash, you'll pay $2.

Many motorists in Illinois, though, are refusing to use the system, since the devices allow toll operators to record their identity and the time and date of each time they pass through a toll booth. This information has been regularly handed over to other government agencies here without a warrant, and has been used against drivers in court cases and even in divorce litigation.

In addition, the toll transponders beam out identifying information whether they're near a toll booth or not, a feature that makes them tempting targets for government police agencies to identify and track cars on non-toll roads, as well.

A few groups in Illinois have been trying to force changes to make the information available only in the case of a criminal investigation, and only after a warrant is presented. So far, however, they have had little success.

In addition to all of the above, however, I wonder about the cost of adding the GPS system to all of the cars, new and used in Oregon, to be able to bill motorists for the milage they drive. These things aren't particularly inexpensive.

If car dealers are required to install them on each car they get in that doesn't have it, you can bet they will also be tacking on a nice little profit for doing this. And an extra $300 to $500 up front may make the difference in whether or not someone buys a car, if they are lower income, buying a used car to begin with.

And someone like car dealers will have to be required to do it. I can't possibly see this being left up to the vehicle owner, on an honor system. Especially for used cars, for instance. The state would never get compliance anywhere near what they'd want, on a voluntary basis.

One aspect of this per-mile idea is simply the availability of the means to make it so. Computers in cars to electronically read the odometer, GPS for location monitoring, tracking cell-towers everywhere to communicate data back and forth.

We now have the means - can it be converted into a new tactic? There is precedent to suggest caution. A prominent example is the control of consumer home electrical loads from centralized utility computers. For twenty years we have had the cheap electronics to do this. Each significant household load would have a little box in it, which receives communications over the power lines themselves, and can report back on the same lines. We have had this technology for decades. It is used in some situations, but it has not been widely installed where the developers really hoped to put - in every home on the grid.

Another aspect that suggests itself is the long standing desire in certain quarters to move Americans from their cars and into mass transit. Practically every study done concludes that the degree of love that most people feel for their cars and for driving forms the primary barrier to a widespread shift to mass transit. There is a cadre of thinkers/planners who are obsessive about finding ways to 'spoil' the emotional attachment of Americans for their cars.


It is usually irritating when one notices that this double-dipping is happening. If it is done clumsily, and flies in folks' face, then the backlash can do damage beyond the initiative itself. Especially when lots of folks are several kinds of unhappy already. Could prove to be less than clever, in addition to being inappropriate.


No, and no. All of these initiatives have 'desperation' and 'ploy' written all over them. Jurisdictions are responding to acute maladies by rushing into half-baked, untested schemes with ulterior motives attached. Knee-jerk policy in action.


In general, I support the concept of levying taxes for specific purposes, and oppose slush funds and diversionary hocus-pocus. If the intent is to reform unprofessional revenue practices, that's good. But it looks highly disingenuous, to suddenly discover the evils of 'general funds', while in the heat of a road-revenue campaign.


No. It could well be that, but not that alone, nor most importantly. Other considerations overshadow the double-dip, in my view.


For sure, there is a general aim to desensitize folks to progressive degrees of control, monitoring, and 'management', in the 'we can manage you better to our satisfaction than you can' sense. Are we leaning that way - yes: but it's long road to the real thing.

Big Brother is Watching..., (and he knows where you've been)