On Sunday, the latest Lundberg Survey reported that average gasoline prices nationwide hit $4 per gallon for the first time since July 2008, and warned that $5 gas is “a real possibility in the next year or two.” Soaring gas prices are putting a serious strain on the budgets of Maryland families and businesses alike, so why is Gov. Martin O’Malley trying to revive a failed legislative attempt to raise the state’s 23.5-cent gas tax by 12 cents per gallon to raise money for transportation? Is the governor completely out of touch with economic reality and the daily struggles of his constituents to make ends meet? Apparently so. At a late April roundtable discussion on transportation funding, O’Malley admitted that “the general public universally opposes” increasing the gas tax (he’s right about that), but insisted that it “is one tax the business community universally supports.” That’s “ludicrous,” responded Kim Burns, president of the Towson-based Maryland Business for Responsive Government. “Outrageous,” fumed Maryland Republican Party Chairman Alex Mooney, pointing out that there’s no money for transportation because “Democrats in Annapolis have been stealing” from the Transportation Trust Fund for years.
O’Malley’s own Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation Funding confirmed that $947.5 million was transferred from the TTF to the general fund between 2003 and 2011; two-thirds of the transfers ($675 million) were done on O’Malley’s watch. The money was used for non-transportation state spending and was never replaced. If history is any guide, future gas tax revenues will also disappear down the same spider hole. Despite O’Malley’s $1.4 billion tax increase and a whopping $4.5 billion increase in state spending since 2007, the commission claims that Maryland’s transportation system “is on the verge of financial collapse.” How could that be? What happened to all that money? Until Marylanders get specific answers, they should dig in their heels and reject any tax increases, particularly regressive ones like gas taxes that destroy jobs and stifle economic growth.
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“We must put the trust back in the Transportation Trust Fund,” commission chairman Gus Bauman admitted in his cover letter to O’Malley and the General Assembly. But the only way to do that is to adopt the commission’s recommendation and amend the Maryland Constitution “to prohibit transfers out of the Transportation Trust Fund for non-transportation purposes.” That, instead of raising taxes, again, would be a much more appropriate and productive task for lawmakers when they convene this fall in special session to redraw legislative districts and ponder their own political futures.
