Gas tax, vehicles fees might be answer to pay for Wisconsin roads says Alma Sen. Vinehout

GOP in House and Assembly can’t agree how to pay $1 billion shortfall in fixing roads.

How to fund roads as part of the Wisconsin budget has Republicans in the Senate and Assembly at a standoff.

Neither house can agree how to plug the $1 billion shortfall in the transportation fund.

Tuesday, the Senate introduced its own version of the budget in an unusual move.

Part of the proposal called for $712 million in additional borrowing to pay for roads,

The Assembly doesn’t want to borrow. It wants to generate more revenue, possibility by raising the state gas tax and vehicle registration fees.

The impasse has brought work on the state budget to a standstill, as it’s now 15 days overdue.

Wisconsin Senator Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, says a slightly higher gas tax could help provide needed funding. She says a gas tax increase might cost the average car driver about $14 more a year. But, if you own a truck?

“For a truck like my old farm truck, it might cost me, maybe, 50 bucks more a year,” she said on a visit to La Crosse on Monday. “But you know what? We drive the roads. We use the roads. And, somebody has to pay for the roads.”

Wisconsin might have more transportation money on hand now, if the legislature had made changes before Scott Walker became governor of Wisconsin.

Vinehout said you can go back more than a decade to decisions made in Madison, which are affecting how the state pays for current needs.

“We know there were changes back in 2005 that took away the small changes in raising the motor fuel tax,” she said. “If they had been in place, we’d have been paying about $.07 more a gallon in gas.”

Aside from road funding in the state budget, Vinehout, who is contemplating a run for governor, also disputes the claims from Walker that the state’s economy is doing well.

She says Wisconsin is 32nd among all states in wages.

“Things are costing more and they’re making the same amount or less,” Vinehout said. “What we see is people don’t have the opportunities. They don’t have the money in their pocket.

They don’t have the ability to do the things they used to do.”

Senator Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, is also bothered by a new Senate budget plan which she says will lead to “debt and more debt.”

Shilling objects to plans to borrow more money for transportation and to eliminate the personal property tax for Wisconsin businesses.