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Governor ponders mileage tax
Governor Tim Pawlenty wants to explore replacing Minnesota's motor fuels tax with one based on mileage. He argues that the advent of renewable fuels and more hybrids hitting the roads is already lowering the demand for gasoline. And, he says, as consumption of gas and diesel drops the reliabilty of the fuel tax as a source will also falter. Currently the state's fuel tax of 20-cents per gallon raises $650 million a year, but that has leveled off recently and is already projected to fall. "And this would allow us then to charge by mile driven, regardless of fuel source. It would be a fuel neutral charge for miles driven," the Governor told reporters in his budget address. Mr. Pawlenty included $5 million in his 2008-09 budget to launch a pilot project testing a mileage tax system in Minnesota. The state of Oregon started a similar test in March, using 250 volunteers driving specially equipped cars. Oregon's experience is encouraging to Rep Bernie Lieder, D-Crookston, who first starting pitching the mileage tax idea back in 1996. "It would be collected the same way you pay your gasoline tax," he told KARE 11 Tuesday. "You wouldn't know the difference. You drive up to the filling station, stick the nozzle in your tank, you?re paying your gasoline tax you don?t realize it." In the Oregon test the vehicle's odometer transmits to a special receiver on the gas pump when it pulls into the service station. The pump computes the number of miles driven since the last fill-up and adds the mileage tax to the bill right on the spot. The state's 24-cent per gallon gasoline tax is deducted from the bill. Betsy Imholt of the Oregon Department of Transportation told KARE 11 that cars that don't transmit a signal are simply charged normal gasoline tax. She cautioned that the system will require much fine tuning and could be years away from actual implementation. As for the notion of using the fuel tax as a way to punish gas guzzlers and reward those who drive fuel efficient cars, that can still be done by setting different tax rates based on the weight of the car. As Rep Lieder described it, "So a truck basically would pay a little more than a light car, a medium sized car would pay a different mileage. And an SUV would pay a different mileage." Naturally drivers won't want to pay Minnesota mileage tax on miles the put on over in Wisconsin or other states. In the Oregon test, the vehicles are tracked by GPS as they move through geographic zones. When the cars leave the state of Oregon the GPS tells the onboard computer not to count those miles. That, of course, raises some privacy questions. Imholt said the State's not tracking specifics of where people are driving. Only whether they're in the state, in a congested metro area, or in a less congested zone. Lucy Kender of the Minnesota Department of Transportation says if the legislature approves a mileage tax pilot project here, all of those details will be considered and dealt with carefully. "Paramount in that is privacy," Kender told KARE 11. "We won?t be starting from ground zero but we will try to determine what makes best sense for Minnesota, in terms of how we would collect it and the controversy and challenges of it there is a privacy issue how we would deal with that." But Kender argues a mileage tax is more equitable, especially considering that hybrids are driving a lot of miles without burning any fossil fuels. When they're not burning gas they're not paying for the roads they use. "Some are paying more than their use, some are paying less than it takes for us to keep the roads up so to speak." If a mileage tax becomes a reality in Minnesota it will be well into the future, and it's not likely to change the current reality of the state's transportation funding shortfall. "Most people are still driving cars that use gasoline, and will for quite a while, " said Margaret Donahoe of the Transportation Alliance. The group supports raising the fuel tax in Minnesota, which has been unchanged since 1988. Donahoe told KARE 11 that looking to the future of a mileage tax is a wise thing to do, but for now the unfinished and overdue projects cry out for more money. "Like the Crosstown Fix, like the 169 devil?s triangle mess in Brooklyn Park, like the Stillwater Bridge, 610, Hwy 14, the list goes on and on." Even Rep Bernie Lieder, who championed the mileage tax long before it was on most people's radar screens, will support upping the fuel tax to put more money toward highways in the short-term.
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