Have you seen this Meriden Record-Journal Editorial?

(Please read and share the following editorial about the slaying of the mileage-tax dragon and send me a note at [email protected].  This truly was a WIN for you, the CT taxpayers!)

EDITORIAL: Slaying the mileage-tax dragon | MyRecordJournal.com |

As if trying to drive a nail into the coffin, the state Senate recently approved a bill that would require legislative approval for participation in a mileage-tax study. It’s a measure of how unpopular the study had become that the bill was hardly necessary. The Department of Transportation had announced a month earlier that there wasn’t enough money to participate in the study anyway.

But the bill was passed essentially to make sure the idea stayed dead, or “basically to ensure that the study that we know isn’t going to happen really never happens, once and for all,” as Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, a Norwalk Democrat, put it. That the approval was unanimous, by all 36 senators, also tells you all you need to know.

The idea behind a mileage tax was deemed too intrusive, with too much of a Big Brother connotation, to even bother with an effort in which Connecticut would have joined Vermont, Delaware and Pennsylvania. DOT Commissioner James Redeker told the I-95 Coalition in April that Connecticut could not afford its $300,000 share of the study costs.

Using a device to track every mile a vehicle drives was so unpopular the Senate wants to make sure the idea does not get anywhere again without legislative approval. The DOT now has to ask for approval if spending for any similar idea comes up again.

Duff compared the action to dragon-slaying: “I think we have slayed this dragon a number of times, and somehow this dragon keeps resurrecting,” he said.

The action can also be seen as a win for Meriden’s Republican state Senator Len Suzio, who had offered a bill to keep the DOT from spending the $300,000 it had promised for the study.

Suzio said it was a victory for residents, who supported his bill during a public hearing earlier in the legislative session.

He said they’re “being heard and will continue to be heard.”

It had long been clear that a mileage tax was going to be a tough sell.

Now it’s clear that it’s so tough a sell there’s no reason for the study.

With public sentiment so strongly against it, this is a dragon that should stay slain.