Beware the Mileage Tax Trap

By State Senator Joe Markley

In July, the Connecticut Department of Transportation announced plans to spend 300,000 taxpayer dollars on a study to see if a tax on the miles you drive in your car would be feasible. The idea is that with gas tax revenue falling, the government needs another revenue source to pay for infrastructure projects.

Presumably, this tax would be collected by placing a monitoring device in your car which tracks the miles you drive.

data and send you a bill. How they would differentiate between miles driven on state roads and miles driven on non-state roads is a mystery to me. Needless to say, although I’m curious to see how this bad idea would work, I would not pay $300,000 to find out.

I have always objected to any argument which says the government needs more money. When revenue is down, government should do less—not tax more. I might add that the Senate Republican caucus has repeatedly put forward plans to fix our state’s infrastructure without raising taxes. Our plan is less ambitious than the Democrats’ and spends money meant to fix roads on fixing roads, not wasteful pet projects like the Hartford to New Britain busway or general state operating expenses.

The good news is that the public reaction against the Mileage Tax proposal was swift and substantial.

The Democrats in the legislature cowered before the public outcry because, well, this is an election year. I expect there is more appetite for this cash grab in the Democrat caucuses than they are letting on, but when it comes to progressives, politics usually come before honesty.

Interestingly, Governor Malloy (eventually) defended the poisonous idea saying, “Are we ostriches and we’re not going to understand what our options are?”

I voiced my opposition to this statement on my state Facebook page. The reaction in the comments was universally negative. And at a recent town meeting I held at Verona’s Pizzeria in Waterbury, the good people were wholly on my side against the idea.

However, some of the people who objected both on Facebook and in person suggested that the state reinstate border tolls instead, and that concerns me.

I fear that Governor Malloy and the Democrats floated the Mileage Tax idea knowing the public’s reaction would be strongly against it, so that they can offer tolls as a less odious alternative. This is the reverse bait-and-switch the Democrats pull masterfully. This dishonest trick has been used to sell us on Obamacare, the income tax (passed 25 years ago this summer), and all other sorts of terrible policies.

Don’t fall for it!

Tolls are simply another tax, and they will not be placed only at the borders but on highways throughout the state. If tolls are reinstated, our gas tax will remain one of the highest in the nation and we will have to pay tolls on top of it—while losing over $200 million in federal funds which we receive because we don’t toll.

When it comes to government, true conservatives from Thomas Jefferson to Ronald Reagan had it right: less is best.