The higher “car tax,” as some legislators called it, is dead, at least for this year. But the effort to improve and maintain Colorado’s roads and bridges will continue.
On Friday, a bipartisan group of Colorado legislators said they would halt efforts to cobble together a roads- and bridge-funding measure in the final days of the 2008 legislative session, which ends Wednesday.
In recent weeks, Democrats proposed a transportation funding package that included an additional $25 vehicle-registration fee and a $6-a-day fee on car rentals as part of an effort to raise about $180 million a year for the state’s deteriorating roads and bridges.
Additional registration fees proved to be controversial, with some Republicans saying they could not support higher car taxes.
At Friday’s news conference, legislators from both parties — flanked by color photo blowups of crumbling bridges — agreed to meet over the summer to consider ways of developing a funding stream for transportation and a bill for next year’s session.
“Transportation isn’t and shouldn’t be a partisan issue,” said Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction.
In recent days, Penry and other Republicans had explored a funding compromise with Democrats that included a $3-a-day rental-car fee and a formula for tapping as much as $70 million a year for roads and bridges from a projected increase in severance-tax proceeds.
In the end, legislators from both parties agreed that it would be better to scuttle the rushed effort and aim for a more comprehensive fix.
A summer effort aimed at getting bipartisan support for roads and bridge repair might enable legislators to craft the “whole solution” to the problem instead of “one-third of the solution,” said Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver.
Romer was referring to the recent report by Gov. Bill Ritter’s special panel on transportation finance that said a minimum of $500 million a year is needed to adequately maintain the state’s roads and bridges.
“We need a permanent and viable revenue stream and we think it should be in the general fund,” said Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, highlighting a key element of the Republican plan for funding transportation.
Summing up the difficulty of reaching consensus on solving the problem, Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, said: “If this was easy, it would have been done a long time ago.”
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
