Capitol Vision, 4 November 2015
Dave Williams
The State Transportation Board approved two budget requests Wednesday infused with money from the transportation funding bill the General Assembly passed last spring.
The agency’s fiscal 2016 mid-year budget includes an additional $757 million for routine maintenance, capital projects and local road work. The fiscal 2017 budget would add another $820 million in spending beginning next July 1.
The transportation funding bill, the signature accomplishment of the 2015 legislative session, includes a series of tax increases and fee hikes aimed at a backlog of needed transportation improvements across the state.
The funding bill’s key provision replaces the state sales tax on motor fuels with an excise tax of 26 cents per gallon on gasoline and 29 cents a gallon on diesel.
The measure also imposes a fee of $200 on non-commercial electric vehicles and strips EVs of a $5,000 tax credit their owners had enjoyed for more than a decade. It creates a new statewide fee of $5 a night on hotel rooms, levies a “heavy truck” road impact fee of $50 or $100 a year – depending on the weight of the truck – and eliminates a sales tax exemption on purchases of jet fuel that has primarily benefited Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc.
Normally, the state Department of Transportation sends its annual budget requests to the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget (OPB) in August. But DOT officials waited until later this year to get a sense of how much revenue the transportation funding bill was adding to the state’s coffers.
McMurry said the new taxes and fees have brought in about what was expected during the bill’s first four months on the books.
“It’s a little dampened down,” he said. “It’s a new reporting structure, and everybody’s going to have to get used to collecting it.”
The 2016 mid-year and fiscal 2017 budget requests will move next to the OPB, which will make recommendations to Gov. Nathan Deal. The governor will present his budget proposals to the General Assembly in January.
Dave Williams covers Government