If Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant winds up calling a special session of the Legislature to deal with the state’s deteriorating roads and bridges, it will be an effort to do everything but the obvious.
Because the Republican governor is so stubbornly against raising the gas tax, his idea is to cobble together a series of piecemeal ways — including a couple that are morally questionable — to come up with anywhere close to the money that a straightforward, sensible increase in the state’s fuel tax would generate.
What Bryant says he wants is an extra $200 million a year from tax collections on internet sales, to which a U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door; from the tax on legalized sports betting, which the Legislature approved secretly a year ago and which another Supreme Court decision enabled; and from starting a state lottery.
Except for the internet sales tax, the rest of the proceeds are based on taking advantage of people’s weaknesses — either gambling on the outcome of sporting events, or the pipedream of getting rich via nothing but an extremely rare stroke of luck.
Betting on sports is coming, and there doesn’t appear to be any movement to stop it, even though lawmakers roundly claim they didn’t know what they were voting on when they approved sports gaming in 2017.
The lottery, though, can still be stopped before it gets on track. Hopefully, unlike the governor, who formerly opposed a lottery, neither House Speaker Philip Gunn nor Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves will back away from their past objections to putting the state into the swindling business. That’s what the lottery is. A big swindle. It entices the poor and gullible to put their limited resources into the hope of striking it rich, even while the state knows that all but a tiny fraction will go away poorer than ever.
Not only is a lottery morally suspect, it’s about the most inefficient way that a government can fund its operations. By Mississippi’s own research, a state has to spend 72 cents to make 28 cents from a lottery. To raise the same 28 cents from a gas tax costs the state a fraction of a penny.
Besides, it should be motorists — the folks whose driving wears out the roads and bridges — who pay to fix them. The fuel tax is an equitable way to divide up the burden, since those who drive more pay more.
Motorists haven’t been asked to pay a penny more in fuel tax per gallon in more than 30 years. Bryant — to his great discredit — is not about to ask them to.
Tim Kalich is editor and publisher of The Greenwood Commonwealth. Contact him at (662) 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
