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All things Nebraska
Back in the day, twice each year, a debate would break out at the news bureau where I used to work: “Who is going to write the gas tax story?”
It was a story you could write in your sleep. “Nebraska’s variable gas tax is rising/ dropping to … blah, blah, blah.”
But it was kind of important. A rise would mean a couple pennies more paid in taxes per gallon; a drop, a penny or two of a break.
Nebraska’s gas tax is called “variable” because the rate was set based on the calculated needs of state highway construction and maintenance. So it rose and fell, depending on how much work needed to be funded.
Pretty smart huh? Well out in Washington, the smart pills apparently didn’t get passed out because the federal gas tax – another major funder of highway work – hasn’t been changed, up or down, since 1993.
Let that sink in for a moment. Back in 1993, the price of a gallon of gas was about $1 (Wouldn’t we like to return to those days?) and the gas tax was 18.4 cents per gallon, where it’s remained.
If your salary or income hadn’t changed in 33 years, you’d be in a world of hurt when it came to paying bills and affording groceries.
Meanwhile, during that period, the cost of highway construction (concrete, steel, labor, etc.) has skyrocketed. And with the advent of electric and hybrid vehicles, some cars aren’t buying much gasoline and thus, not paying much in taxes.
The federal gas tax is outdated. One recent columnist in the Lincoln Journal Star compared it to “an aging rock star on a farewell tour.”
Congress could have done the wise thing, and slowly increased the gas tax to keep up with the cost of road building.
But such politically risky moves, like raising a tax (even for a good purpose), could get someone defeated for re-election for heavens sake! So that can got kicked down the proverbial road.
Good roads are important, and according to one survey, Nebraska’s highways aren’t as good as they used to be.
In the most recent annual report by the Reason Foundation, Nebraska ranked 29th for condition and cost-effectiveness of its state highway system. That’s down from No. 15 six years ago.
That’s the kind of drop that could get a football coach fired.
Anyway, Congress is apparently debating highway needs, and two columnists recently offered two alternatives to paying a tax on gasoline purchases. An official with the American Highway Users Alliance, which represents automotive and road construction interests, said that taxing vehicles based on their weight would be the best way of providing adequate federal funding for highway needs. Heavier trucks and electric vehicles would pay more, and small compact cars would pay less.
Meanwhile, a co-author of that highway condition report by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, wrote that a fairer way would be to tax vehicles based on the miles they drove.
This is an important issue for rural residents, who likely put more miles on their vehicles to reach schools, jobs, shopping centers and hospitals.
A new tax would also reduce gas prices, by eliminating the fuel tax, and would help the federal debt because Congress has been using general tax funds to supplement the inadequate federal gas tax.
A tax on weight would be collected when we license our vehicles. The Highway Users guy also argued that it would make heavy-duty trucks – which cause much more wear and tear on highways than cars – more affordable, by supposedly reducing taxes on them. Hmm.
The “tax on miles driven” would seem the fairest, since drivers who use the highways more would pay more.
But how would you collect such a tax? With a government gauge on your odometer?
Sounds kinda “big brother” to me, though four states already have a mileage tax – Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Virginia.
Any new federal tax would require Congress to act, the same group that has allowed the gas tax dilemma to fester.
Let’s hope that they can tackle a real issue. And maybe for an encore, they could work on securing Social Security for the future.
Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He is a retired senior reporter for the Nebraska Examiner and the former Capitol Bureau Chief for the Omaha World-Herald. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
