Michigan Legislature adjourns without gas tax hike

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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The Michigan Legislature adjourned
late Thursday for much of the summer without voting to pump more money
into road improvements after talks broke down over a gradual gasoline
tax increase.
Senators a day earlier had balked at a major plan to
more than double fuel taxes over five years to fix deteriorating roads
and bridges. An attempt to find support for a more modest proposal that
would keep pace with inflationary construction costs never gained muster
in the Republican-controlled Senate on Thursday.
The bill would
have let the 19-cents-a-gallon gas rise each year by whatever is less — 5
percent or the annual change in highway construction costs. Gas and
diesel taxes could ultimately have gone as high as 32 ½ cents a gallon,
though it could have been decades before the ceiling was hit.
It
would not have come close to raising the minimum $1.2 billion to $1.8
billion more a year that Gov. Rick Snyder and others say is needed now
to bring the transportation system up to par.
The Republican
governor said he would not have been satisfied with the backup plan but
would potentially have seen it as progress to help address the
structural problem of declining fuel taxes — caused by people driving
less and with more fuel-efficient cars.
"We’ve made a lot of
progress. But it still needs time to coalesce to get a total solution,"
Snyder told reporters Thursday afternoon.
Senate Minority Leader
Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing, criticized majority Republicans and
said it was "very frustrating" that road-funding talks over a
comprehensive solution stalled and could continue over the summer and
into the fall. Eight of 12 Democrats had signaled their support for more
than doubling fuel taxes in exchange for a tax break for homeowners and
renters on Wednesday, she said, while just nine of 26 Republicans did
so.
"It’s a lack of leadership. … I think (Republicans) should
work to get the votes that were promised and live up the original deal
that was struck," she said.
Republicans, though, said Democrats should have helped pass the backup plan while work continues on a
longer-term solution.
"The
other side of the aisle didn’t want to participate in fixing the
problems that we could, the short-term problems," said Senate Majority
Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe.
Michigan — home to the
headquarters of major U.S. auto companies — spends less per driver on
roads than any other state, yet also has some of the country’s highest
taxes at the pump because the sales tax applied to motor fuel mostly
goes to schools and local governments under the state constitution.

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