No. 1: Michigan pays a lot more in federal gas tax than it gets back from Washington. Every time we send Uncle Sam a dollar, we get back about ninety-two cents.
That’s been the case for a long time. According to a group called the Coalition for Donor State Equity, we’ve contributed $1.7 billion dollars to improve roads in other states since the 1950s.
Did you know we were that generous?
Fact No. 2: We now have a chance to get a big chunk of that money back to fix our roads. If our lawmakers come up with an additional $84 million dollars, Washington will throw in another $475 million. That means we would get more than four bucks back for every dollar we tax ourselves.
For Michigan, that’s a very good deal. But here’s fact No. 3. Unless things change before Sept. 30, we are going to lose all that money, thanks to our dysfunctional legislature and a crazy mentality that says that raising any tax at all is death, no matter how great the need. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop appears to oppose raising any revenue, even if it means we get far more back than we pay in.
In this case, here’s all we’d have to do: Raise the gas and diesel tax a little bit. And there are sensible bills in the legislature that would do this. For example, State Representatives Richard Ball, a Republican from Shiawassee County, and Pam Byrnes, a Democrat from Washtenaw, have introduced a bill to boost the gas tax by four cents a gallon and the diesel fuel tax by six cents.
Neither of those taxes have been raised in a long while. The diesel tax has stayed the same since 1984.
If their bill became law we would be able to get the money we need. Kirk Steudle, director of MDOT, the Michigan Department of Transportation, says there’s no choice. If we don’t get these funds, Michigan won’t have money forsnow removal and salt, let alone road and bridge repair.
Yet right now, things don’t look good. This is an election year, and some lawmakers are afraid to do anything that looks like raising taxes. State Representative Wayne Schmidt of Traverse City said “we just can’t place any more burden on the citizens of Michigan.“
From my perspective, having your car destroyed by bad roads might be a bigger burden than paying four cents a gallon.
By the way, unless we start behaving rationally, it’s going to be even worse than I’ve told you. MDOT estimates Michigan will lose more than two billion in the next four years.
And that is exactly what’s going to happen, unless the public demands the bills to get us the money are blasted out of committee. Some people are starting to figure this out.
Last week, hundreds went to Lansing to protest this shortsightedness. The senate majority leader was quoted as saying sorry, folks, but “there are not sufficient votes for that now.” Well, senator, you are your party’s leader.
For the good of us all, find them. *** Please note: the initial essay made reference to Wayne Kuipers. It was actually Wayne Schmidt that Mr. Lessenberry was referencing. We apologize for the error.
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