Transportation bill headed for House vote

Deleted is a plan to get local governments out of the sales tax business and create new 6-cents per gallon local excise taxes. Instead, cities, counties and school districts will mostly keep doing what they’ve been doing: using local option sales taxes to fund specific priority lists.

Local governments, however, will be required to spend whatever percentage of their sales tax that comes from motor fuel on transportation-related projects. For school districts, that can include buses and fuel, among other items.

Other local taxes, including the local option sales tax used to rollback property taxes, will no longer apply to motor fuel. Instead, those taxes will increase from 1 percent to 1.25 percent.

Left unchanged is phasing out of state sales taxes on motor fuel. The bill instead creates a 29.2 cents per gallon excise tax, a new annual registration fee on electric vehicles and elimination of a $5,000 state tax credit for electric cars.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported late Tuesday that an official state estimate found HB 170 would raise $870 million in the fiscal year that begins 2016 and slightly more than $1 billion by FY 2020.