Gas tax needs to be part of state discussion

By Iowa City Press-Citizen

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Gov. Terry Branstad has been using his bully pulpit lately to renew discussion about raising the state's gas tax to help pay for needed infrastructure improvements.

Earlier this month, Branstad told about 65 people during a town hall meeting in Onawa that there could be public support for increasing the gas tax between 8 and 10 cents over three years if it's linked to decreases in property and income taxes.

We've said before that, rather than having state and federal governments continue to play shell games with gas taxes on consumers and subsidies to producers, we wish the government would do more to step out of this process altogether and allow Americans to pay the true cost of gasoline.

And because new fuel efficiency technologies are making per gallon gas use a less accurate indicator of actual road use, we wish the state and federal government would come up with more accurate ways of measuring a driver's wear-and-tear on the public road system. (Perhaps something like the Vehicle Miles Traveled tax, which was studied by the University of Iowa last year, as a way to track the number of miles each vehicle travels and assess tax on a per-mile basis.)

But with neither of those changes likely to happen any time soon - and with 22 percent of Iowa's bridges having been rated deficient last year, and with Iowa facing a $215 million annual shortfall in revenue needed to maintain the road system - a gas tax increase seems a possible fix in the short term.

At least, that's what a citizens' panel appointed by Branstad recommended last year, and that's what a bipartisan group of legislators supported during the recent legislative session when they proposed a 10 cent per gallon increase in gas taxes over the next two years. (The increase would have been more than sufficient to cover the annual deficit.)

The proposal, however, aroused far more bipartisan opposition than it did bipartisan support. An Iowa Poll commissioned by The Des Moines Register in February showed that 68 percent of respondents opposed such a hike while only 31 percent supported it.

We were disappointed that - for whatever reason - the governor decided against using the full power of his bully pulpit to back an increase during the legislative session. But since the session ended, he has been spreading the word that the state needs to discuss increasing the gas tax for the first time since 1989.

Although the idea of a gas tax remains highly unpopular during these troubled economic times, something does need to be done to address Iowa's aging infrastructure needs. A report released last fall by Transportation for America found that only two states, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, had a higher percent of deficient bridges than Iowa.

And at 40.4 cents per gallon (with 21 cents coming from state taxes), Iowans pay the lowest gas tax of any of the surrounding states other than Missouri (35.7 cents). Even with a 10 cent per gallon increase, Iowa would rank third among those surrounding states, with Wisconsin (51.3 cents) and Illinois (62.8 cents) still higher.

It's unclear whether lawmakers would support linking a gas tax increase to decreases in income taxes. But we're glad the governor has stopped trying to avoid the issue and, at least, has begun floating the idea as a pre-election trial balloon.

And when critics point out the obvious problems with this less-than-perfect solution to finding a sustainable way to maintain Iowa's aging infrastructure, we hope the governor continues to push them to come up with alternative, sustainable solutions rather than mere campaign rhetoric.