From a lengthy story in the Indianapolis Business Journal:
A license plate tax of $20 to $50 per car will be one of a raft of proposals considered by the Legislature next year as a way to fix a hole in funding for road maintenance.
And to keep expanding Indiana’s system of highways.
The plate-tax idea has been floated recently by Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, as a way to help the Indiana Department of Transportation plug an annual budget hole of at least $60 million and as much as $200 million.
Kenley, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also said he’s looking at giving cities and towns—which by one estimate have collective road maintenance shortfalls of $500 million a year—the option to raise gas taxes to help maintain their roads.
And Kenley also would like new revenue to start planning for expansions of interstates 65 and 70—and to revive plans for the much-maligned Indiana Commerce Connector that would loop from Interstate 69 to the Indianapolis International Airport.
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INDOT funds road maintenance and road building primarily from taxes on gas, diesel and some other fuels. The recession that started at the end of 2007 sent that revenue tumbling, from $881 million that year to $760 million in 2010, according to figures from the Indiana Department of Revenue.
Fuel tax receipts rebounded to $815 million this year, but INDOT doesn’t believe they’ll ever return to pre-recession levels.
The reason? The proliferation of fuel-efficient cars and trucks, including those that use hybrid electric-gas engines as well as those that run on natural gas—which right now is not taxed. With drivers using less gas, they pay less of the state’s 18-cent-per-gallon tax.
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See the full article here:
http://www.ibj.com/article?articleId=38511
