Fuel taxes

The state of new Mexico has a 2 billion dollar state surplus after 8 years of booming oil and gas industry.
Now a bunch of democrats got voted in and they waste no time in passing new taxes.
Instant state wide buyers remorse.
A lot of them will be gone next election cycle because of this.

One of the things they want to do is raise the state fuel tax 10 cents a gallon on gasoline and diesel. NM has one of the lowest state gasoline tax rates in the nation at 17 cents per gallon.
I guess they didn't pay any attention to what happened in france. People don't like it when you mess with their fuel taxes.

This is why raising the fuel tax to fix the roads is BS. The state has had a surplus for the last 2 or 3 years and the roads didn't get fixed, they started redoing some roads last year if they were expansions, but just repairing existing roads, not so much and did it with out a tax increase.
Why would they suddenly get fixed now with the addition of a 10 cent fuel tax?
They're not and anyone who believes it is an idiot.
I have seen this before. When I lived in Virginia, the state fuel tax would be raised to "fix the roads" and nothing would change, if anything they stayed the same or got worse and all the money just went to I-81 and I-95 to mostly build more weight stations and buy road salt.
The biggest thing that seems to effect the amount of road work getting done appears to be crude oil and asphalt prices. All through 2010-2014 not a lot of road work got done here, not until oil prices broke below around $70 per barrel. When oil was over $100 a barrel they just posted a lower speed limits instead of fix the road.
If I though paying more taxes actually got me more services I would be all for it. If I though paying 10 cents a gallon for gas got 7 to 9 cents a gallon worth of better roads I would be like "shut up and take our money".
I don't have a dog in this fight, I mostly drive my leaf and this year my wife is likely getting a plug in hybrid hyundai, I expect our monthly gasoline bill to drop from $20 to $40 dollars per month down to effectively $0 so it really doesn't effect me. Better roads would be nice but I know it isn't going to happen.

Oilpan4 said:

One of the things they want to do is raise the state fuel tax 10 cents a gallon on gasoline and diesel. NM has one of the lowest state gasoline tax rates in the nation at 17 cents per gallon.

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So that road expenses are paid out of fuel taxes, as was the case until about 1990 in most states?

Or would you rather have road repairs paid for with some other tax? If so, which one?

Or do you want roads full of potholes and bridges falling down?

And electric cars make this a new problem, as we don't pay fuel taxes.

At some point, and probably sooner than a lot of people think, the issue of road tax is going to have to be re-worked to include electric vehicles. Or, we could simply pay for transportation infrastructure out of general taxes, which is what I would advocate. It benefits everyone whether they drive or not, or regardless of how many miles they drive. Most road expenses aren't proportional to the amount of miles your car rolls over them, so a pro-rated tax has always been a silly approach.

New Mexico ranked nearly 40th for EV sales in 2017.
Sold 369. Better than 2016, where 254 were sold.
DoE estimates as of 2018 there are between 500 and 600 electric cars registered in NM.
And I'm one of them.

I don't even think NM had a state EV credit because back around 2008 to 2010 we were in debt worse than Ireland.

Which taxes would I like to see pay for the roads?
That's easy, how about some of the 2 billion dollars in oil and gas surplus from royalties.
For oil and gas production NM was number 4 in the US.

Electric cars? As stated previously NM is so far behind the rest of the nation in electric car sales there's no point in an addition tax. An electronic car tax would cost more to implement than it would collect.
To me it's legal tax evasion.

No I don't want pot holes or falling bridges. Did you not read the post at all?
I said we have pot holes and beat up roads in spite of a huge budget surplus.
And that if I thought most of the money collected from fuel taxes would be used to fix the roads I would gladly have everyone else pay higher fuel taxes.

I agree with what nubo said.
Everyone depends on the roads and bridges even if they have a vehicle or not.

Oilpan4 said:

The state of new Mexico has a 2 billion dollar state surplus after 8 years of booming oil and gas industry..

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This surplus you say NM has because of the booming oil and gas industry isn’t going to begin to pay for the future extreme weather changes/damages.

The Federal gas tax hasn’t been raised for some 23-25 years (forgot exactly how long), so it is up to the States to raise the needed funds for road maintenance and repair.

NM isn’t 5he only State that has raised the gas tax. More than half of the States have raised the gas taxes in rec3nt years because of the need to maintain and repair.

Then raise taxes in the future as needed.
No need for preemptive taxation that will just be squandered on BS.
Then we will be stuck paying for new BS and then the roads will need to be fixed, so taxes get raised again. It's a never ending cycle.

In Washington, they charge you $150/year just to dive an EV to offset the road tax from gas. I guess it makes sense we all use the same roads. Depending on how many miles driven per year it could be less money than what is taken out in gasoline taxes or a lot more.

Oilpan4 said:

No need for preemptive taxation that will just be squandered on BS.

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Like this?
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-documents-detail-nancy-pelosis-185000-codel-to-italy-and-ukraine-in-2015/

deano511 said:

In Washington, they charge you $150/year just to dive an EV to offset the road tax from gas. I guess it makes sense we all use the same roads. Depending on how many miles driven per year it could be less money than what is taken out in gasoline taxes or a lot more.

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Actually $100 is for road usage with $50 going into a program to build public charging network.

Since many places and jurisdictions base road taxes on so many cents per gallon purchased, and because cars in general are getting better mileage than they used to, it seems fairly straightforward that there will be less funds collected to help fund roads and maintenance. So I understand the need to increase the cents per gallon aspect of road taxes. I would like to see some stipulations, though, that the funds collected for road taxes are actually set aside for that purpose.

As far as EVs go, I'm happy to pay for my fair share towards building and maintaining roads (starting in 2020 here in California). I don't expect my neighbors to pay for my share of the road taxes.

Randy said:

Since many places and jurisdictions base road taxes on so many cents per gallon purchased, and because cars in general are getting better mileage than they used to, it seems fairly straightforward that there will be less funds collected to help fund roads and maintenance. So I understand the need to increase the cents per gallon aspect of road taxes. I would like to see some stipulations, though, that the funds collected for road taxes are actually set aside for that purpose.

As far as EVs go, I'm happy to pay for my fair share towards building and maintaining roads (starting in 2020 here in California). I don't expect my neighbors to pay for my share of the road taxes.

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I'm also ok having EVs pay some sort of road tax (didn't know that CA was implementing it next year), but in a way it's double taxation. EV drivers are already paying utility taxes for their "fuel", it's just that those monies aren't allocated specifically for roads.

In my perfect world road taxes would be based solely on miles driven and the weight of the vehicle. The heavier your car the more per mile you pay since that weight impacts the roads more.

DaveinOlyWA said:

deano511 said:

In Washington, they charge you $150/year just to dive an EV to offset the road tax from gas. I guess it makes sense we all use the same roads. Depending on how many miles driven per year it could be less money than what is taken out in gasoline taxes or a lot more.

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Actually $100 is for road usage with $50 going into a program to build public charging network.

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I didn't have time to wait for the government to build charging stations.
I built my own.
So my enthusiasm to help fund charging stations for other people is pretty much non existent.

New Mexico’s current gas tax is at 17 cents per gallon. Raising the current gas tax to 27 cents per gallon would allocate $333 million in revenue by the 2022 budget year for the State and Local Road Funds. New Mexico's government has not raised the tax on gasoline since 1993. The state’s tax does not go as far as it did in 1993, lagging behind inflation.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recommends that adequate funding for operating, maintaining, and improving the nation’s transportation system be provided by a comprehensive program with dedicated revenue sources.

Oilpan4 said:

Then raise taxes in the future as needed.
No need for preemptive taxation that will just be squandered on BS.
Then we will be stuck paying for new BS and then the roads will need to be fixed, so taxes get raised again. It's a never ending cycle.

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The only reasonable thing to spend royalties from fossils on is carbon reduction. Not OP's roads, or any other pet preference.

If I thought a 10 cent a gallon gas tax would complete even 100 million dollars in road work I would be for it.
333 million dollars would give us the nicest roads in the country.
But I'm not convinced.

Do a little math. If a 10 cent a gallon fuel tax would raise 333 million by 2022 and that will fix the roads, then why weren't the roads getting fixed in 2014 or 2015 when the state posted it's first surplus in a generation?

They have a 2 billion dollar surplus and just paved about 2 miles of state 2 lane divided highway with cold patch and made it worse than it was.
If they are just going to dump cold patch by the shovel full then they can do that with out a tax increase.

I would be for it when I see the fuel tax money go into its own account, an itemized list and time table for road repair projects billed to that account. If they can show that then sign me up.

Seriously is anyone stupid enough to fall for "let us pass the bill then we can find out what's in it" again?
This is "let us pass the tax then you can try to figure out what it gets spent on".

SageBrush said:

Oilpan4 said:

Then raise taxes in the future as needed.
No need for preemptive taxation that will just be squandered on BS.
Then we will be stuck paying for new BS and then the roads will need to be fixed, so taxes get raised again. It's a never ending cycle.

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The only reasonable thing to spend royalties from fossils on is carbon reduction. Not OP's roads, or any other pet preference.

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The best way to reduce fossil fuel consumption in NM is replace the coal fired power plants that generate a large portion of the state's electricity with nuclear. But that's nuke regulatory commission, DoE level stuff.
New Mexico is one of the least populated states and a likely pick for the long term storage of spent nuclear fuel.
So might as well nuke the whole state.
No one in this state cares about electric vehicles so no gain there.
I try to spread the good word on electric vehicles but no one here seems to care.
We don't have horrific vehicle related air pollution like California so there isn't a huge
need for all electric vehicles either.
Most of our air pollution comes from mother nature.

The roads a pet project? Ha!
The definition of a pet project is:
"An activity or goal pursued as a personal favorite, rather than because it is generally accepted as necessary or important".

So roads and bridges that everyone benefits from are generally unnecessary and unimportant?

The only thing more retarded than new nuclear is fossils, but lucky for us we have solar and wind. Spend the money on grid infrastructure to expand geographic sharing and to open up resource rich areas for development.

Oilpan4 said:

New Mexico ranked nearly 40th for EV sales in 2017.
Sold 369. Better than 2016, where 254 were sold.
DoE estimates as of 2018 there are between 500 and 600 electric cars registered in

Everyone depends on the roads and bridges even if they have a vehicle or not.

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NM sounds like Wisconsin, after the plug in vehicle registration tax passed over doubling the annual registration fee on plug ins compared to pickups.
plug in sales dropped 90%
To monthly sales of single digits ever since.
The implementation of the tax cost $5,000,000 in DMV upgrades which won’t get paid back by the tax collected for 10 years.

Plug in vehicle taxes are a solution looking for a problem and mainly a political speak to the base issue .

SageBrush said:

The only thing more retarded than new nuclear is fossils, but lucky for us we have solar and wind. Spend the money on grid infrastructure to expand geographic sharing and to open up resource rich areas for development.

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Solar and wind can't replace reliable coal and natural gas power plants only nuclear can reliably cover the night time base load.
Hydro electric can do it too but most of the hydro that can be tapped into with out flooding cities has already been built.
Wouldn't that be ironic.
I have come to the conclusion that people who are anti CO2 and also do not like nuclear power don't care about really solving the problem.
They think putting up some solar panels and punishing consumers with carbon tax is going to do it. If that actually worked then Europe would have accomplished it already.
I say bring on the gen III+ reactors.
You do realize that a gen III has never melted down or exploded. You might know this if you actually leaned about nuclear reactors instead of recoiling in fear of them.
No permits will be granted for new gen II plants to be built in the US, only gen III or gen III+ from here on out

rmay635703 said:

Oilpan4 said:

New Mexico ranked nearly 40th for EV sales in 2017.
Sold 369. Better than 2016, where 254 were sold.
DoE estimates as of 2018 there are between 500 and 600 electric cars registered in

Everyone depends on the roads and bridges even if they have a vehicle or not.

Click to expand...

NM sounds like Wisconsin, after the plug in vehicle registration tax passed
plug in sales dropped 90%
To monthly sales of single digits ever since.
The implementation of the tax cost $5,000,000 in DMV upgrades which won’t get paid back by the tax collected for 10 years.

Plug in vehicle taxes are a solution looking for a problem and mainly a political speak to the base issue .

Click to expand...

NM just has the standard registration fee for all vehicles that also applies to electrics. Seems fair to me.

I tried looking up if NM ever had a state funded buyers credit and as far as I can tell it does not appear that they did. If the state did chip in 2,500 to 7,500 dollars like other states then the DoE would probably be estimating more than 500 to 600 vehicles for the whole state (as of Jan 1, 2018).
NM does not have an additional electric vehicle tax, yeah I made sure to check that before I bought one.