GOP REJECTS JERRY BROWN’S NEW CAR FEE, GAS TAX

California Gov. Jerry Brown wants over three billion dollars in new taxes, including a $65 tax on every vehicle, plus increases in gasoline and diesel excise taxes. The money will go to paying for transportation needs that he ignored in his recent budget.

Once again, Brown has decided that the 42 Republican legislators in the State Capitol are chumps.

This week, Brown’s office circulated his latest proposal to fund transportation infrastructure–after both the State Senate and State Assembly Republican Caucuses have been unequivocal that raising taxes on Californians is off of the table.

Gov. Brown Proposes $65 Fee On Drivers As Part Of $3.6 Billion Plan To Fix Highways

CBS San Francisco

Within hours of the release of the Governor’s wish-list for legal plunder, Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen (R-Modesto) released a statement saying that “the Administration’s ideas call for more than doubling the vehicle registration fees and raising the price of fuel on all Californians–we disagree and think Californians have paid enough.”

State Senate Republican Leader Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) issued a joint release with Senator Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), Vice Chairman of the Budget Committee, in which Nielsen spoke to the proposed taxes:

The Governor’s solution to fixing our roads and highways cannot be to raise taxes. We are already paying enough. What are they doing with the taxes Californians have been paying at the pumps? Most Californians drive over 10,000 miles each year; an increase of six cents per gallon for gas, eleven cents per gallon for diesel and paying an additional $65 in car taxes per vehicle is an enormous burden on California’s working families least able to pay them.

Apparently Governor Brown thinks that Republicans are “posturing,” and not serious about drawing a line in the sand against higher taxes.

The Governor wants Republican legislators to forget that it was just two-and-a-half months ago that he signed the largest budget in state history, coming in at nearly $160 billion dollars. This partisan budget was negotiated between Brown and Democrat leaders, without any meaningful input taken from Republicans. Since a budget requires only a simple majority vote, no Republican votes were needed.

Despite billions of dollars in unanticipated tax revenues, and rosy forecasts for the year, the new budget “shorted” needed transportation funding. This was done with premeditation on the Governor’s part, given that as soon as he signed the budget, he then called for a special session of the legislature to raise taxes to fill the politically manufactured transportation funding deficit.

Clearly, again, Brown’s thinking is that Republican legislators are just lacking in intelligence, at even a basic level.

Republicans spent the 2013-2014 legislative term in the super-minority in the Capitol. They had very, very little power. What little leverage they did have was only due to serial corruption by Democrats in the State Senate, with three of them not voting for much of the term (one of the three was convicted on multiple felonies, the other two await trial, but have since termed out).

The 2014 campaign by Republicans to climb out of the super-minority, and regain relevance in the State Capitol, was largely centered around an explicit theme that if the GOP could pick up seats, they could stop tax increases from being passed in the legislature. Perhaps if they were taking a shot at being the majority party in the Capitol, there would have been a more robust and broad campaign theme. But climbing back to over a third in each caucus was about being able to mount an effective defense: no new taxes.

Right now is when Republican legislators are showing their worth, and demonstrating their resolve. This is the moment when they are showing countless volunteers, donors and supporters that elections do matter, and that united together Republicans can protect California taxpayers.

Ironically, the Governor’s ongoing insistence that taxes be hiked by billions of dollars gives Republican legislators a chance to demonstrate that they have the courage of their convictions.

The sad reality is that this kind of high-stakes kabuki with Republicans has a tremendous downside for the State of California, which is that despite the fact that taxpayers are sending record funds to state government, Democrats simply won’t spend any of that money on the basic brick-and-mortar building of roads.

If the Governor was truly interested in making California a better place, instead of abusing Republicans, he should actually listen to them. While some solid Republican ideas were incorporated into the Governor’s latest proposals, largely rejected were a lot of great and creative proposals put forward by the GOP caucuses to fund transportation infrastructure using existing tax revenues.

Maybe, just maybe, if Capitol Democrats will absorb the fact that car taxes, gas taxes, income taxes, property taxes, tobacco taxes, and oil severance taxes (to name a few of those proposed) are not going to happen, the last week of the legislative session could be used productively to prioritize some existing revenue for roads, highways and bridges.

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Jon Fleischman is the Politics Editor of Breitbart California. A longtime participant, observer and chronicler of California politics, Jon is also the publisher atwww.flashreport.org. His column appears weekly on this page. You can reach Jon at jon@flashreport.org.

Via: Breitbart

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Legislators Duel Over Impending Gas Tax Hike

Democratic legislators in the state Senate have brought Californians closer to new hikes on the cost of driving their cars. But the committee vote represented little more than a first step in a complex, intense negotiation between Republicans, Democrats and the man trying to stay influential but above the fray — Gov. Jerry Brown.

Republicans have resisted Democrats’ preferred approach, but California’s business lobby has pressed both parties to embrace new taxes and fees. “Last week, business organizations such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group said any deal should seek to raise at least $6 billion annually by raising gas and diesel taxes and increasing vehicle registration and license fees,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Part of the rationale for increasing fees, instead of simply dialing up gas taxes, has centered around the growing popularity of hybrid and electric vehicles in California — and the state’s interest in squeezing revenue out of every car on the road. “We have these Teslas that are being sold and they don’t pay any gas tax,” complained state Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, as CBS Sacramento noted.

Gas in California has remained higher on average than out-of-state, thanks to cap-and-trade fees and the state’s unique environmental rules about the blends of gasoline that must be sold. Current state taxes include an excise tax of 39 cents, between 30 and 42 cents in sales tax, and 10 cents for the cap-and-trade levy, as Watchdog Arena observed.

Brown stays secretive

At a recent news conference that left some observers hungry for detail scratching their heads, Brown refused to hint at a revenue source for the improvements. “I’m not going to say where the revenue’s going to come from, how we’re going to get it,” he said. “We’ll get it done, but I’m not going to put all my cards on the table this morning,” Brown said, according to ABC 7 News.

Brown was joined at the appearance by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, who signaled separately that negotiations would be tough. “It will be a bumpy road, but our constituents expect us to work together and figure something out,” she toldthe San Francisco Chronicle.

To date, the governor has not let slip whether he would support or oppose a tax hike to make up the difference.

Dueling proposals

That raised the possibility that Republicans might get their way, scrounging up revenue from savings and budgetary jujitsu instead of tax increases. But GOP legislators have been keen on siphoning revenue away from California’s cap-and-trade program, which Brown had availed himself of previously in order to fund construction spending on the state’s much-debated high-speed rail project. That has drawn strenuous objections from Sacramento Democrats.

The current proposal advanced by Assembly Republicans “would raise more than $6 billion a year by eliminating thousands of state employees and unfilled positions and reallocating existing state money, both from the budget and from other projects,” the Chronicle noted, while the plan pushed by Beall would raise billions with a suite of increased gas taxes and fees, including an “annual road access charge of $35 a vehicle,” according to the paper.

It was Beall’s bill that cleared its first committee test in the Senate this week, with Democrats besting Republicans in a party line vote.

For now, just a few broad outlines of an agreement have come into focus. According to the Chronicle, both sides reject the option of a “one-time fix, such as a bond measure that would pile more debt on the state. Any money raised must be earmarked only for road and infrastructure repair, and protected against being siphoned into other parts of the state budget.” Plus, legislators agreed that expenditures should be clearly identified and made public, with some kind of oversight and monitoring built into the arrangement.

Via: California Political Review

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California: After The Transportation Money’s Gone…

In its assessment of California’s budget for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the Legislative Analyst says this about state highway spending:

“Proposition 1B, a ballot measure approved by voters in November 2006, authorized the issuance of $20 billion in general obligations bonds for state and local transportation improvements…. The budget appropriates $258 million of Proposition 1B funds for various transportation programs. This appropriation level is significantly lower than the appropriations made in recent years because the majority of funds have already been appropriated.” (Emphasis added.)

Caltrans reports that as of August 31, the Legislature has appropriated $14.2 billion of the $15.6 billion in Proposition 1B that were given to Caltrans for dispersal. Nearly $1 billion of the funds left are earmarked for transit projects. Of the $14.2 billion lawmakers have determined how Caltrans will spend, $13.4 billion has been spent.

Of the remaining $4.3 billion in the bond, $2 billion went directly to cities and counties for road repair. Another $1 billion went to the Air Resources Board for pollution reduction efforts like subsidies to purchase cleaner-burning deisel trucks.

The Legislative Analyst’s overview doesn’t say that coupled with the exhaustion of Proposition 1B funds, state gas tax collections are declining.

More Californians are driving – as any commuter will attest – but they’re driving less distances and they’re behind the wheel of increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles.

Gas tax revenue is the primary funding source for California street and highway maintenance and construction. Twenty counties, however, have boosted local sales taxes by one-half cent to pay for local highway and road improvements.

There’s been no increase in the gas tax in 20 years. And the federal Highway Trust Fund, which supplies California and other states with transportation dollars, has been broke since 2008.

An even-numbered election year like 2014 is unlikely to be the time elected officials decide how best to extract more money from their constituents — even if for needed transportation improvements.

Perhaps the Legislative Analyst might begin a 2015 discussion of the problem with a 2014 publication on the state of the state’s transportation funding.

A possible title:

Now What?

Via: California Political Review

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