River Country Journal reader Ruth Strawser has highlighted what she describes as “several interesting transportation bills before the legislature that readers might be interested in.” They include:
SB 919 Vehicles (HB 5300); registration; registration fees; modify.
Sponsor Roger Kahn (HB Sponsor: Judson Gilbert)
Would increase statewide registration fees for most passenger vehicles by 67%. Weight-based fees for commercial trucks would increase 25% (but those are likely to also be affected by loss of the diesel discount in Request No. 04244’11). This would raise an estimated $500 million for transportation purposes. This bill would also dedicate revenue to the Michigan Transportation Fund and also to the new Commercial Corridor Fund. There is a schedule of distributions which shifts the proportion of funding to the two funds so that the Commercial Corridor Fund will receive all the registration fee revenue by the 2021 fiscal period.
Sen. Approps
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?2012-SB-0919
SB 918 Transportation (HB 5298); motor fuel tax; motor fuel tax; modify, and implement a wholesale tax on fuel wholesalers.
Sponsor Roger Kahn (HB Sponsor: Rick Olson)
Would convert the current fuel taxes to a wholesale tax. Limits in the bill would ensure the tax could neither increase nor decrease more than one cent per year after the initial year. The current rate of 19 cents per gallon would be replaced by a wholesale tax with the effective rate of 28.3 cents per gallon. The current diesel discount of four cents per gallon plus numerous other exemptions for vehicles owned by local governments, school buses, transit agencies and non-profit agencies would also end. The bill is projected to raise $541 million annually, but this is contingent on travel trends and future fuel efficiency.
For additional information on this topic – from the perspective of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy – click on the following link to access an article published in the organization’s Michigan Capitol Confidential: Nation’s Highest Gas Tax Coming to Michigan?
Editor’s Note: This post was expanded at 12:48 p.m. 2-2-12 by adding the link to the article from Michigan Capitol Confidential.
Notta big deal to folks around here…alot of folks will just add that to the list of other things they pick up in Indiana like beer, and cigs on their way to and from work in Indiana (since more than half the folks I know work in Indiana anyway). Will be a real kick in the pants to schools and local municipalities that have to fuel buses, DPW trucks, fire trucks, police cars, etc…
But that new pipeline from Canada is gonna bring us all these jobs and make gas cheaper for us…..that’s what our buddy Fred Upton keeps telling us right (ooh I just threw up typing that one).
I dunno……between my sewer bills to pipe sewage to TR and this gas tax….I think I’m gonna build an outhouse, buy a horse, grow a beard and change my name Graber….clip clop, clip clop, clip clop…….
If the folks in Lansing want to tax something that folks around here don’t need to go to Indiana to get cheaper they need to tax what we manufacture in great abundance here….let’s see, that’d be meth and weed I think.
Oh wait, never mind….they can’t vote on that….based on the crap they keep coming up with in Lansing, it might be a conflict of interest.