For several years, we and others, including members of Mississippi’s Transportation Commission, have been encouraging state lawmakers to significantly raise the fuel tax to pay for maintenance of roads and bridges.
That encouragement has fallen on largely deaf ears in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which is loathe to raise any tax, no matter how sensible the increase would be. As we pointed out in the summer of 2015, when gas prices were running about $2 a gallon, the time was opportune to raise a tax that had not been adjusted since 1987. Motorists, we said at the time, would hardly notice, since prices at the pump were the lowest they had been in six years, and even longer if adjusted for inflation.
Now, the Legislature has squandered that timing window. Gas prices are moving back upward, with the national average having risen about 40 cents a gallon in the past year and edging closer to the $3 mark than the $2 one. Now raising the gas tax becomes even harder politically.
— Tim Kalich
