I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments about some of the ideas for transportation in this piece from today’s N&O.
Despite my hostility towards wasteful light rail, I wanted to add a few points: a) that under the scheme outlined here, you’d get a lot of environmental benefit in rural and natural areas — particularly as we focus more resources around urban areas; b) that tracking vehicle usage could amount to a tool for central planners and state nannies, but perhaps such tracking could be administered by a private third party, much in the same way our cellphones are; and c) can you imagine a free-market type suggesting a czar? What can I say, I’m a pragmatist, too.
-Max Borders
Max,
I would be hard pressed to argue with you on these points, except to reiterate that I think that any system which measures mileage driven is merely a legislature’s whim away from being a mechanism of social control. As an American who still beleives in liberty, I don’t feel that it is anyone’s business as to how many miles I drive, as long as I can afford to pay the gas bill. At some point, I guarantee that the enviro-weenies out there would push to penalize people who drive more than the “right” number of miles. (With “appropriate” exemptions for certain favored occupations, along with forms to fill out for this, etc, etc.) This system would be a possum that I don’t want to let out of the sack: Once it was let go, it would be tough to get it back in! And, before you say it, I do not believe that this sort of legislation is very far fetched. Judging by SB3, the enviro-weenies seem to have much more pull than they ought to in the General Assembly.
One of the good parts of the current gas tax is that it is anonymous, and that there are only a relative few points of collection for that tax.
Collecting tax from the millions of North Carolina drivers would be much more of a costly administrative task than collecting gas taxes from a few fuel terminals stations. I have never heard of any complaints from anyone about the way that the Department Revenue handles this appointed task. This is one tax that is relatively fair, and that puts no onerous burden of compliance on backs of the North Carolina motorist. And we also derive a benefit from out-of-state drivers who buy gas as they pass through NC.
While mileage based tax collection does have a theoretical appeal, I submit that there are a few aspects that make it far worse than the system that it would be replacing.