John Carona: gas index tax not getting support needed

Ben Wear reported in the Statesman today that State Sen. John Carona called a noontime press conference to call on his colleagues to support indexing the gas tax.

According to Carona, the Senate is ready to pass a gas tax indexing bill, but the House bill is still sitting in the Ways and Means Committee.

It appears the bill doesn't have much support in the House.

Carona took the press room podium alone stating “I didn’t want to put anybody on a political stage for an initiative that may not be successful,” he said. “In this building nobody likes to vote for anything that resembles increased taxes, so we did not even make the request. We just felt like it was fair to leave everyone out, and I’d take the heat for it.”

Quoting from the article:

Carona’s charts indicated that indexing the gas tax (actually the combined 38.4 cents a gallon state and federal taxes) to the consumer price index would raise an extra $5 billion a year by 2030, and linking annual increases to an even higher highway construction index would generate about $11 billion a year extra by then. Do that, Carona said, and leverage that extra revenue to sell highway construction bonds, and there would be a lot fewer Texas toll roads in 2030 than under the status quo. And no private toll road leases by the state, which the Legislature is talking about banning for two years.

“This issue needs to rise to the top of the list,” Carona said.

Right now, however, it may not even be on the list.

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