Tom Warne Report, 19 October 2012
Texas lawmakers are studying options to raise more funding for roads during the 2013 legislative session and two proposals are leading the pack with the strongest interest. The Texas Association of Business (TAB) has announced it favors a $50 hike in the annual vehicle registration fee, with the revenue dedicated to new transportation projects. Several key legislators are supporting a proposal to dedicate the sales tax already in place for vehicle purchases to be spent on roads. As next year’s legislative session draws near, transportation advocates are pushing to get more attention on severe road funding shortages, and warning that delaying work will result in more congestion and more costly fixes in the future.
“The cost of doing nothing is very expensive,” said state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, who was appointed chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee earlier this month. He says that while the vehicle registration fee hike is worth looking at, it may be harder to sell than dedicating the sales tax on vehicles to transportation.
Last year, a proposed $50 hike to the state’s vehicle registration fee was unsuccessful. Unlike the gas tax in Texas, the vehicle registration fee is exclusively dedicated to transportation and the revenue does not drop as cars become more fuel-efficient. Such an increase to the current $50.75 state registration fee would bring in $1.2 billion annually, and the revenue could be leveraged to bring in several more billion by selling bonds, according to the Texas Transportation Institute.
TAB President Bill Hammond said his group’s board voted almost unanimously in favor of doubling the annual registration fees. “Clearly, this is a difficult task, but the business community in Texas feels like it’s spending an awful lot of time waiting in traffic,” Hammond said. “This would be new money coming in for maybe $15 billion to $16 billion of bonds for road construction.”