Monday, November 9, 2015, 8:00PM: After years of talk, the Michigan Legislature and Governor surprised me last week and passed a road repairs funding bill. The new law (to be signed tomorrow) includes a jump in the gas tax at the end of 2016, and we’ll worry about that when we get there. I gave my take on all this back in April, with the bottom line being that Michigan isn’t collecting as much in fuel taxes to fix our roads, and Michigan isn’t getting the money from Washington to fix our roads like other states are. For that last point, I wonder what Michigan’s congressmen are doing in Washington?
Back to our short-term Gas Game: wholesale prices dropped significantly last week, and retail prices are slowly working their way lower. In Fort Wayne, prices are already close to $2, and in Texas, they had a gas price war this weekend. Prediction: lower prices all week. -EA
Yes, Ed, it’s a “nicely” designed bill that won’t go into effect until 2017, after the Legislators face the electorate next year. And it doesn’t reach full fruition until 2021 or 2022 even though the roads need fixing now.
In a nutshell, it increases the current .19 + 6% sales tax/gal by 7.3 cents on gas and 11.3 cents on diesel along with a 20% increase on license plate fees. There is an automatic inflationary increase on both gas/diesel beginning in 2022.
It also relies on a $600 million contribution from the general fund, money that is expected (hoped for) to be there in 2021. The $600M figure is half of the total $1.2B that is said to be needed to repair the roads now, 2015.
Even with the increase with diesel, it doesn’t pay for the damage that heavy trucks do to our roads….Why should the cars pay for the damage that the truck do????
greg531 Heavy trucks also pay additional taxes to compensate for that damage.
What are Michigan congressmen doing in Washington? Amash evidently thinks that there should be NO MONIES going into Washington so thusly NO MONEY will be coming out. His logic states that perhaps we should all go out and fix the roads OURSELVES, perhaps by a ton or two of blacktop and fill our own holes. NO MONEY FOR YOU! He is the main reason Michigan isn’t getting our fair share of revenue BACk into our own state HANDS DOWN. The article you take us to in your statemnt bemoans that fact rather well.
Fix it yourself, shovel it yourself and sweep it yourself. True Ayn Randian thinking.
Thanks for the comments!