As gas tax dwindles, Oregon eyes mileage

Portland, Ore. —- For years, Oregon has been diligent about reducing the state’s dependence on fossil fuels, but its environmental consciousness has come at a stunning price —- gas tax revenues are down $4.8 million a year compared with 2006.

That drop, driven by lower fuel consumption along with the dwindling economy, has prompted Oregon to consider an entirely new method to fund its road repairs. In his upcoming budget, Gov. Ted Kulongoski has called for moving to a new highway tax based on mileage, not gasoline purchases.

A state task force will look at equipping every new vehicle in the state with a Global Positioning System tracking device to quietly record every mile driven and where. Motorists would pay at the gas pump based on how much they drove, no matter how fuel-frugal their vehicle.

The plan still requires legislative endorsement, and the full details could take several more years to work out, but state analysts said the governor’s endorsement is a crucial step on a road many states are beginning to travel —- ending dependence on the gasoline tax.

“This is a way to try to develop a fair funding mechanism that we’re going to have to have if we’re going to be aggressive in terms of looking at electric cars and hybrids and plug-ins and all those options, and at the same time continue to invest in our roads and infrastructure,” said Rem Nivens, the governor’s deputy communications director.

The mileage tax plan comes as Oregon also prepares to spend $650 million on transportation projects next year, a mini-economic stimulus package that is a localized version of President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed infrastructure spending program. In Oregon, it will be financed in part by a 2-cents-per-gallon tax increase.

Jim Whitty, manager of the state Transportation Department’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding, said the state already faces a $10 billion shortfall in financing transportation projects and will see that number climb unless the decline in gas tax revenues is addressed.

State officials say only a major rethinking of highway finance can keep the state from running seriously short of transportation funding as early as next year.

While Oregon appears to be out in front in looking at a mileage fee, several other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Texas, also have expressed an interest in phasing out the gas tax in favor of charging motorists for how much they drive.

The Oregon proposal already is running into opposition from some drivers who say it would discriminate against rural residents who may have to drive several miles just to get to the grocery store, create potential inequities between Oregon drivers and those from out of state and raise inevitable privacy concerns with big brother keeping a satellite watch over where everyone is driving.

“What’s next? Tattoo numbers on your forearm?” wrote one commentator at Oregon Catalyst, a conservative online forum.

Jason Williams, executive director of the Taxpayer Association of Oregon, said, “This is just another wide-eyed government experiment that’s going to fail and cost the taxpayer a lot of money. We basically see it as the next big boondoggle of 2009.”

While the GPS mileage counters could be programmed not to regularly report a vehicle’s location, that wouldn’t entirely eliminate privacy concerns, Williams said. “The fact that they tag your car to a certain place at a certain time means they’re tracking your movements. So what happens in a divorce court, when the wife tries to track where her husband was, or a boss tries to make sure you were where you were supposed to be?”

HOW IT WORKS

A pilot program in which trial GPS devices were installed in 285 cars in Portland in 2006 and 2007 more or less successfully allowed motorists to have their mileage measured and paid for every time they bought gas.

Under the trial program, drivers were charged 1.2 cents a mile, a rate that was considered equivalent to the state’s 24-cents-a-gallon gas tax rate when calculated on a vehicle with an average fuel efficiency of 20 miles per gallon.

“They drive up to the pump, and there’s a mileage reader there, very much like a modern toll reader, which identifies the car as a mileage fee payer, and the total mileage driven in each zone is transferred by a wireless radio frequency that goes into a database, and the mileage fee rates are applied,” said James Whitty, the Oregon Department of Transportation employee in charge of the state’s effort.

In the proposal under study, the GPS trackers would be installed only in new vehicles, and would be capable of capturing mileage only when cars are driven on Oregon roads. Out-of-state drivers would pay the standard gas tax, Whitty said.

An additional advantage, state officials say, is that the mileage zone counters also could charge higher fees to motorists driving into congested areas during rush hour. One such trial congestion program in Seattle recently, also implemented with GPS devices, found that motorists were much less inclined to drive into congested areas when they paid a financial penalty to do so.

—- Los Angeles Times