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Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Pay to drive, flush?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pay by the flush. Or pay by the mile. Take your pick. It’s the nanny state at work.
In Massachusetts, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick is expected to unveil a proposal this week to use GPS chips to charge motorists a quarter-cent per mile traveled. “It’s outrageous; it’s kind of Orwellian, Big Brotherish,” said a Republican state senator, Scott Brown, who’s drafted legislation to prohibit the practice.
A similar plan is under study in Idaho and Rhode Island and one has been tested in Oregon. In North Carolina, a proposal has been made to go to a similar system in lieu of a gas tax.
The Oregon test involved 300 paid volunteers who allowed the state to install GPS receivers that didn’t allow real-time tracking, but did allow a satellite to locate the vehicle by coordinates. The recorded mileage was paid as a tax when refueling.
A similar idea is at work with water in Australia. Under a proposal being touted now to combat drought, residents would be charged for each flush of the toilet. It would replace a system that bases sewage charges on a home’s value rather than water use.
“It would encourage people to reduce their sewage output by taking shorter showers, recycling washing machine water or connecting rainwater tanks to internal plumbing to reduce their charges,” said Adelaide University Water Management Professor Mike Young, who’s promoting the idea across Australia.
The pay-to-flush proposal has sparked a flurry of outrage, but it’s essentially the same system that exists here — that is, you pay for the water you use. Unless the charges are engineered to escalate quickly to gouge consumers because some water czar has determined they’re being wasteful, it’s no big deal.
The miles-traveled proposal is of more concern. It introduces a system that’s easy for government to manipulate. Rates will creep upward, a fraction of a cent at the time, until government collects easily and painlessly what it wants. For those who live in rural areas of Georgia and commute long distances, a practice that’s not uncommon, the tax would be onerous. What’s more, it invites the lifestyle police to play games with those who have chosen to live outside central cities and commute across Metro Atlanta.
Pay-per-mile? Definitely not. Pay to flush? We’re there now.
