Time For A Gas Tax Increase in Maryland There’s a lot of talk around Annapolis these days about the structural deficit. This is one of those ‘deju vu’ moments: haven’t we heard all this before?

Most of us don’t have a clue about what this really means, or the details of government taxing and spending. Unfortunately, many of our legislators don’t either. But here is the simple primer: our government is costing more than we can afford, or we need to do more and can’t afford it. Something’s gotta give, and it’s usually the taxpayers.

Talk of deficits, structural or otherwise, quickly shifts to how to raise more money to pay for them. Now comes the question of choices that need to be made.

The debate has already started about which taxes to raise, or, to use the euphemism of public policy types, how to ‘modernize’ the state’s tax system. The Governor is rightly cautious about staking out a position before he has all the facts. Broad changes to tax policy will have an impact on the state’s economy, often in ways that can’t be anticipated entirely.

Nevertheless, there is one tax that the legislature and governor should not wait to increase, and that is the gas tax. The gas tax is the best user tax there is. It is simple to understand: those who drive, pay. If there is one thing that we should all be able to agree on it is that our state’s transportation system needs drastic improvement. Roads need to be maintained. Maryland is growing and the simple fact is that we are going to need more and wider highways. And all agree there isn’t enough money to do these things.

It is also a time to start making investments in public transportation. Revenue from gas taxes is one reason why other countries are able to pay for modern and efficient public transportation systems. With the exception of the DC metro, the region’s public transport is only slightly better than a third world country. Baltimore needs a Red Line connecting the east and west sides of the city. The region needs a high-speed rail connection that ties our growing population centers together.

We can also affect the environment and national policy. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that Maryland alone can make a difference, but we can at least set an example for that the federal government should follow. Increase prices of gasoline may reduce auto use, and reduced auto use will lower polluting carbon emissions.

Reduced driving also reduces demand for oil and will drive down world oil prices and the revenue that oil producing countries like Iran depend on to pay for their nuclear ambitions. The collapse of the Soviet Union was as much due to the price of oil going to $15 a barrel as anything else.

Senate President Mike Miller wants to increase the gas tax by $.12. Seems like good public policy to me.

Labels: Annapolis, flush tax, Maryland, oil

  11:30 AM •  1 Comments • Links to this post

Out With The Old Gov And In With The New The Governor’s mansion in Annapolis changed hands yesterday. Ehrlich is out, O’Malley is in. So what did Bob Ehrlich accomplish as Governor? As the first Republican to hold the highest office in Maryland since the disgraced Spiro Agnew, how should we judge his one term performance?

Ehrlich’s most memorable legacy will likely be a highway, the Inter County Connecter, which took the Governor’s backing to move the project from plans to pavement. Other than that, history will judge Ehrlich’s tenure as unremarkable. There were some achievements, like the “flush tax” to help rescue the Chesapeake Bay, and more funding for black colleges and primary and secondary education. These are important, but were hardly that major change to politics as usual in Annapolis that his election promised.

Ehrlich’s goal was to move Maryland politics to the “center” and provide an ideological balance to a liberal legislature. His policy achievements were mostly “small ball”, incremental changes that built on earlier policies. In this respect, he probably was not much different than his democratic predecessors.

Where Ehrlich should be judged is for his inability to move the state in bold new directions. His biggest failure is that he lacked vision. Being a nice guy from Arbutus wasn’t enough. This was the reason why Ehrlich was unable to achieve his long-term goal to create a competitive and sustainable Republican party in Maryland.

Ehrlich’s uninspired leadership was mainly the reason he wasn’t re-elected, not the fact that it was a democratic year nationally. After all, Republican Governors won re-election in blue states.

One of the bluest is California where the Governator, Schwarzenegger easily won re-election and is now making waves with a show of bold policy making that Ehrlich lacked. In his first term, Schwarzenegger took on entrenched interests to reform the state’s worker’s compensation program, which was killing businesses in California. Now Schwarzenegger is proposing far reaching reform of California’s health care system and is taking the lead nationally on global warming by proposing a reduction in the carbon intensity of gasoline.

Health care and the environment are issues where voters look to democrats to take the lead. But Maryland, which prides itself on its progressiveness, has failed to meaningfully tackle long-standing problems with education, health care, and the environment. Baltimore’s students are still failing, too many lack health insurance, and the Bay is still dying.

Being a great governor is less about whether you are a democrat or republican and more about whether you dared to provide bold leadership. Yesterday, Martin O’Malley began his first term cautiously, but in time, we will know whether the new governor is willing to take that dare.

Labels: Bob Ehrlich, education, flush tax, Governor, O'Malley

  3:35 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post