Joel Fox, editor of Fox & Hounds and president of the Small Business Action Committee, recently noted his observations and questions about Gov. Brown's proposed raise in gasoline tax and his support of SB 350, a proposal to cut petroleum use in transportation vehicles 50 percent in 15 years. Here are his thoughts...

 

Gov. Jerry Brown says we should raise per-gallon gasoline taxes 6-cents, diesel fuel 11-cents a gallon and tie these taxes to inflation. Brown also supports SB 350, the climate change legislation that proposes to cut petroleum use in transportation vehicles 50 percent in 15 years. Wouldn’t reducing the use of gasoline shrink the revenue anticipated from the gasoline tax to fix the roads?

The goal of SB 350 is to have the 50 percent reduction in place in 15 years but the process to achieve that goal will begin long before 2030 deadline thus reducing revenue from the gasoline tax to fix the roads.

Maybe the aim is to have all the infrastructure repair projects completed in a decade. Unlikely.

Of course, the gasoline tax is not the only piece of the governor’s plan to raise revenue. There is also a road user fee of $65 per driver and a shift of cap-and-trade funds.

The $65 fee applies to all cars. The main idea is to raise money, of course. But a secondary idea is to make sure that cars that pay limited gasoline taxes—electric vehicles—contribute to road maintenance.

Yet, non-electric vehicle owners will be paying both the user fee as well as the per-gallon tax increases. Is this fair? To make matters worse, it’s well established that many electric vehicle purchasers who received subsidies to buy the EVs came from higher-income brackets. But the double whammy plan of increased fee and gasoline tax increase will especially burden lower-income individuals.

The governor’s transportation plan endorsed a Republican idea of using cap-and-trade money – although he would direct the money not for roads but for buses and public transportation systems. Cap-and-trade’s biggest chunk of change is already earmarked for the high-speed rail, a dubious use of the cap-and-trade funds.

Despite efforts to sidetrack that revenue to other transportation purposes and away from the oft-criticized controversial high-speed rail that has not happened.

It seems inevitable that the high-speed rail project will go through.

Or is it inevitable?

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Indonesia ‘s government canceled a proposed high-speed rail project to run from the capital, Jakarta, to the large city of Bandung.

Two reasons were given for halting that country’s first high-speed rail project. Because of the short distance of 93 miles between the cities the need for a high-speed rail was questioned. The second reason dealt with an issue that shadows the California high-speed rail project—funding. Indonesia was using government money with no private investment. Yet, many critics said the money should be used for other infrastructure projects.

According to the Journal, "The high-speed project was always controversial in Indonesia, which spans 18,000 islands and has pressing needs for other infrastructure involving roads, ports and electricity as well as rail. Critics dubbed it a vanity project of President Joko Widodo...."

Doesn’t that criticism sound familiar?