The Virginia Senate on Friday approved a penny-a-year increase in the gas tax that would boost highway maintenance funding and replace the money lost by scrapping the hated “abuser fees” on bad drivers.
The measure, which would raise the state’s 17.5-cent fuel tax by 5 cents by fiscal 2014, is expected to face trouble in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates, which has shot down similar proposals to raise taxes and shows little inclination to consider them this year.
Each one-cent increase in the gas tax would cost a typical motorist about $10 annually, proponents of the bill argue. Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, said it would amount to “two Big Mac meals a year.”
Republican opponents said it is disingenuous to ask Virginians to pay for the increase while the governor is proposing to expand programs in other areas, like prekindergarten enrollment.
The money would reverse a mounting shortfall in road maintenance that threatens to crowd out the rest of the state’s transportation budget. Virginia Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer has said that deficit now amounts to about $260 million.
“I wish that we were able to find contractors that would pour that asphalt for free,” Saslaw said. “We have been unable to do that.”
The Senate voted 25-15 to approve the bill, which, if signed into law, would be the state’s first gas tax increase since 1986. Last year, the General Assembly proposed raising $65 million toward the maintenance gap by creating a set of “abuser fees” on bad or dangerous drivers, prescribing as much as thousands of dollars in new costs for some traffic offenses. But after a public uproar surrounding the fees’ exemption for out-of-state drivers and the cost of some of the fees, lawmakersin both houses quickly moved to abolish them.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
