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My State Rep is on the committee for roads and bridges and pointed out that a good chunk of the money collected from the gas tax goes directly to the NH State Police instead of actually being used for road and bridge work.
You people are far more trusting than I. A bit naive TBH.
This has nothing to do with fixing roads. If it did they could simply slap a 10 cent tax on fuel that is to be designated only for road repair.
This is about control, period. Republicans and democrats are both power hungry beyond anything our nation has ever seen. They create these studies, these problems to justify their power and existence. The more complex they make it, the better. That way you little people can't hold them accountable.
IMO, whomever proposed this should be removed from office.
Exactly. In Wyoming we have fairly crappy roads. But they are not the worse ive seen either. They had a 10 cent gas tax increase a few years ago. All the people involved with it swore it was to repair roads. They always hope that people are too dumb to actually read the bill. Well in the bill it gave the county supervisors the power to do what they wanted to do with the bulk of the money. So all they did was for the most part give county employees a raise. The tax made gas cheaper in neighboring states so most people driving thru or people living on the border bought their gas out of state. Now with the oil crash and the lack of instate gas buying due to the loss of oil field work, they are screaming they want to do another tax.
"The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not been raised since 1993, and many states have not indexed their own gas taxes to inflation, so those key funding sources have fallen far behind the nation’s needs."
Well you can thank the Tea Party, right wingnuts, and others for not having the basket balls to raise the gas tax.
The federal gas tax has not been raised since 1993. NH went from $0.18 in 1991 to 22.2 cents in 2014. What idiot in Concord came up with the .2 after the 22 cents? Iowa and Idaho for example the state tax is 32 cents.
So we have crumbling roads and bridges. And no politician wants to put their name on any tax.
So now, waste a whole bunch of tax money for a "study". Brilliant.
mmm..and since you so willingly want to blame one party...what exactly happened to all that shovel ready money ..ouch, I know truth hurts huh?
Heres a clue your gas tax doesn't go towards roads ( you know like your toll fees don't either) so..where does the money go..governmental waste..like the majority of tax money. The problem isn't the current tax rate not being raised, the problem as always is government accountability
With our minimal adoption of EV and plug-in hybrids, there is no legitimate reason for New Hampshire to "take the lead" on this. Conserve our tax dollars, let wealthier states with high EV adoption do the experiment. Then we can learn from their mistakes and adopt a mature solution that doesn't infringe on privacy.
As much as I hate to endorse toll roads, NH needs to end the standoff with Massachusetts and implement open-road tolling for the entire length of I-93. Charge a token amount (25¢?) in the manual lanes for high-occupancy vehicles, to encourage carpooling and keep tolls from deterring vacationers. Better yet, work with MA DOR to extend the commuter tax deduction to include our tolls (is this already in place?)
With our minimal adoption of EV and plug-in hybrids, there is no legitimate reason for New Hampshire to "take the lead" on this. Conserve our tax dollars, let wealthier states with high EV adoption do the experiment. Then we can learn from their mistakes and adopt a mature solution that doesn't infringe on privacy.
Believe it or not, NH is in the top 10 penetration on HEV registrations in the US - even ahead of MA
That's why I phrased my statement the way I did -- we are not in the top 10 for plug-in electric, the whole state has maybe a thousand registered all-electric vehicles?
In term of total gas-tax-evading vehicles on the road (not per capita), we are nowhere near a level where finding an alternate way to tax drivers by distance is a critical issue for New Hampshire. If we're really concerned about "road tax" evasion, then requiring EV chargers to be metered separately and charge road tax on the electric bill would make more sense than GPS trackers.
One time I worked with a contractor that avoided all roads where he was likely to be stopped and have his fuel checked. He always used untaxed heating fuel that is dyed red so it can be easily detected. Maybe we need more inspection stations for commercial vehicles. IMHO all electric vehicles do so little wear to the roads that a special tracking system is unwarranted. I would also like to see the State Police funded from the General Fund and not from highway taxes.
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I-93 open-road tolling all the way to the border.
