Let's examine Rep. Mary Grant's claim in a recent column that the governor's proposed gas-tax increase will cost a daily commuter from Beverly a little less than $120 a year.
Average mileage for Beverly commuter going into Boston: Sixty miles round-trip, or 300 miles per week
Average gas tank size: Fifteen gallons
Average miles per gallon in commuter traffic: 20
Average miles per tank: 300.
So this commuter needs one tank of gas just to get back and forth to work. Let's say it takes another half-tank of gas to get around in the evenings and on weekends. This average commuter would fill his or her tank about 1.5 times per week (and that might be a conservative estimate).
A 19-cent gas-tax increase will cost this commuter an extra $225 per year. This is certainly not less than $120, and this commuter will still be paying tolls under the governor's plan.
But it's also important to consider what this increase will cost people who don't even leave the North Shore. For them the choice between a gas-tax increase and toll hike is no choice at all. Any increase in the gas tax is purely a new tax.
Someone who uses 11âÑ2 tanks of gas per week just getting to work and getting the kids to school, sports practices or dance lessons, will pay $225 in new taxes each year. That's enough to buy groceries for your family for a couple of weeks.
Public transportation isn't really an option to get the kids to hockey practice at 6 a.m. or to get to work in Burlington. So how fair is it to ask people for whom public transportation is simply not an option, to heavily subsidize those for whom it is, or those in Boston who need to drive far less and rely heavily on the T? (I ask this as someone who takes the train to Boston every day and would presumably benefit from this "subsidy.")
Also keep in mind that many of those who buy monthly rail passes do so, in part, with pre-tax dollars; and those who pay tolls above a certain threshold are entitled to a deduction on their state income tax. There is no pre-tax option or income-tax break for a gas tax.
And when you have a couple of kids, trading in the "fuel-guzzling" minivan for a Prius isn't exactly an option either.
And what about the business owners in Beverly who rely on fleets of vehicles for deliveries and service calls? The plumbers, electricians and contractors? These businesses are going to see a major increase in their cost of doing business, which will result in more expensive goods and services for consumers or, even worse, job cuts for employees.
Even worse is the fact that most of this new tax revenue will go to things that have nothing to do with the conditions of roads in and around Beverly. You'll be subsidizing the past and current abuses of the poorly-managed "quasi-public" agencies that caused many of these problems to begin with, and have been siphoning off transportation resources for years.
Hitting families and businesses with a major tax increase will further hurt an already unhealthy economy and take real dollars that could have been spent elsewhere out of the economy and send them to Beacon Hill.
The bottom line here is that the families and working people of the commonwealth who don't happen to work in Boston are being asked to pay for the problems created in Boston and on Beacon Hill, and getting almost nothing in return. They are angry about it not because they don't understand the concept that tax money pays for public goods and services, but because they understand that in Massachusetts they get so little value for the taxes they already pay.
Here are some questions for Rep. Grant:
How much does the state generate in gas taxes currently and how is that money spent?
Why is it that MassHighway has so little money for road maintenance? What's to say this new tax money won't also be diverted to the general fund instead of used to repair our roads?
If this revenue is about paying the debt, when the debt is paid off or is reduced to a more manageable level, will this tax be automatically repealed or lowered?
If you're so serious about reform, are you co-sponsoring any of the legislation that would eliminate or streamline agencies or would have these agencies sell some of their sizable real-estate portfolios to raise money?
Will the legislative per-diem for travel costs increase to cover the additional gas tax?
Rep. Grant's claim that it would be "fiscally irresponsible" to ignore this problem — and nobody talking about real reform is ignoring the problem, they're just focusing on the actual problem first — is difficult to take seriously given her track record on Beacon Hill. This is the same legislator who voted against your sales-tax holiday because she was concerned about how the $15 million it would cost would affect "the stability of the state's budget," but just a few weeks earlier voted to restore every penny of the roughly $125 million in spending vetoed by the governor from a budget that was known to be well out of balance and getting worse by the day. That broken budget has resulted in massive local-aid cuts to cities and towns in the commonwealth, including Beverly.
Being "fiscally irresponsible" in my mind, is asking taxpayers to fix what she perceives to be a revenue problem while turning a blind eye to the spending problems she's helped create.
Fix the spending problems and mismanagement and then perhaps we can talk about a commonwealth with even a chance of experiencing long-term economic health. Because taxing this state to no end will do nothing but ensure long-term economic illness.
¢¢¢
Brett Schetzsle of Beverly is a member of the Republican City Committee, but the views expressed here are his own.
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