Tag: gas tax

Sailing into the headwinds

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2013 Legislative Diary | No Comments

In the mornings, I often run into a Naval Academy grad (Class of 1957) taking his daily walk.

“Have you raised my taxes yet?”  he frequently asks.

I know the answer he doesn’t want to hear.

Yesterday, the Governor announced his proposal to increase the gas tax to raise money to improve the state’s transportation infrastructure.

When I ran into my neighbor today, I decided to sail into the headwinds.

I told him what the Governor had done.

“Why do we need to do that?”  he asked.

“To compete with Virginia, which has increased its tax to improve its system,” I responded.

“Why does that matter?” he replied.

I thought about saying that we could compete with Mississippi instead but thought better of it.

Number one in a hurry

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2012 Legislative Diary, Uncategorized | No Comments

       I was going to ask a question about the Red Line.

      The proposed mass transit line runs through the heart of the Edmondson Avenue neighborhoods I represent.

       The hearing was on the Governor’s gas tax bill, and I was going to make the point that the Red Line could not be built unless we had additional revenue.

       Then Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake testified that if the City does not receive more funding this session, it “will likely be forced to close as many as 15 bridges to traffic within the next two to three years.”

       I raised my eyebrows. 

       The Mayor noticed.

       “That was not a skeptical response,” I told her and the audience.  “It was an ‘Oh, wow!’”

        Baltimore would no longer rank 16th on the list of congested metropolitan areas.

        We would be number one in a hurry. 

        The devil is in the details, as it is with most legislation, but a 21st Century transportation system is an investment we must make.

October 19 – A different kind of tax

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2011 Legislative Diary | No Comments

How is a gas tax different from all other taxes?

The business community supports it.

That’s not my great insight. The witness from the Washington Board of Trade said so when testifying before our committee.

“That’s well and good,” one of my colleagues stated, “but how do we persuade the people we represent that they should pay this tax?”

“It’s an investment in our economy,” one of the business reps responded. “Goods will be delivered sooner, and your constituents won’t waste their time and money in traffic.”

It’s the same argument President Obama is making.

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