Although I have not personally experienced a crumbling bridge or tire-eating chuckhole on a Colorado highway, I keep reading that our deteriorating roads need a big infusion of cash.
The sensible approach would be to raise the state gasoline tax of 22 cents per gallon that was last increased in 1992. But raising taxes requires a public vote, so our General Assembly has been looking at raising fees, which the legislature can do on its own.
The fee in question is the vehicle registration fee. When you get Colorado license plates, you write only one check to the county clerk, but the money goes two ways. One is the “specific ownership tax,” which is based on the value of the vehicle. The other is the “registration fee” or “license fee,” and it’s pretty much the same for everybody.
For instance, our 1990 Geo Prizm, a fine little car with a little over 200,000 miles on its odometer, has a license fee of $21.52, and a specific ownership tax of $3, for a total license-plate cost of $24.52.
A bill currently under consideration would raise the license fee by $41 over two years, so my Prizm plates would go from $24.52 to $65.52, an increase of 167 percent. The license plates for a new Cadillac Escalade would also go up — but only by 8 percent, from $1,186.81 to $1,237.81. Despite its virtues, a 19-year-old Geo Prizm is not a car that many rich folks drive. Our legislature has proposed a revenue measure that strikes much harder, in percentage terms, on us economically challenged citizens. One might wonder why we bother electing Democrats, since we’re perfectly capable of voting Republican if we want to shaft the poor.
Further, this money is supposed to fix roads and bridges. Now, which vehicle likely causes more wear and tear — the 2,200-pound Prizm driven 1,500 miles a year, or the 5,700-pound Escalade driven 10,000 miles a year? Both would pay the same $41 increase for highway maintenance. Isn’t Colorado a wonderful place, where even Democrats believe that the owners of old sub-compact cars should subsidize the owners of new Cadillac SUVs?
Why not increase the gasoline tax by 50 cents a gallon to 72 cents? The current pump price would go from $1.75 to $2.25 — still a relief from the $4.25 of last summer.
If consumption stayed at the current statewide level, about 2.3 billion gallons a year, then annual revenue would increase by more than $1 billion a year, more than enough to fix the $500-million-a-year highway maintenance shortfall identified last year by Gov. Bill Ritter’s Blue Ribbon Transportation Finance and Implementation Panel. The surplus could go to mass transit, improved bikeways and other ways of getting around. Even hard-core drivers should favor this — the more people who aren’t using the road, the more pleasant your driving experience.
If consumption dropped, even by 20 or 30 percent, there would still be more than enough money to maintain our roads, with the added benefit of less pollution and congestion.
So why is our state government looking at unfairly increasing license-plate fees, rather than an increase in the gasoline tax, which is a reasonably fair levy?
For one thing, there’s no powerful lobby of Associated Clunker Drivers to oppose the license-fee increase. For another, somebody (i.e., Gov. Bill Ritter) would have to go out and stump for a gas-tax increase and make the case to the public. That’s a lot of work, and it might cost some “political capital” earned by promoting windmill factories. But it’s a job somebody needs to do if, indeed, our roads and bridges are in such bad condition and need more money.
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) of Salida is a freelance writer and history buff, and a frequent contributor to The Post.
