Gas Tax Garagiola Hurts Poor and Middle Class with 20 cents/gallon Gas Tax Hike

In 2010, I testified against State Senator's Garagiola's bill to raise the state gas tax 10 cents a gallon.  It failed.  In 2011 he submitted a bill to create a State Transportation Commission and had himself appointed as one of only two legislative members.  That Commission, with no dissenting report, called for a new 6% sales tax on gasoline, a 18 cent/gallon increase.  I testified against that increase before the State Senate in 2012 too.

On February 16, 2012, Garagiola, running for Congress in the new Sixth Western Maryland District,  flipped flopped and said he wouldn't support the 6% sales tax on gasoline because, "we have to be sensitive to peoples' pocketbooks and the economy."   The Frederick Post editorialized on February 20, 2012, "Garagiola's flipflop has more than a whiff of being a politcal-based decision."

Then, this year, Garagiola flipped flopped back.  He voted for an even larger, 20.2 cent/gallon gas tax increase, including a new 5% sales tax on gasoline and a newly-indexed-to-inflation gas tax.

The money will go to build the inside-the-Beltway Purple Line and the Red Line in Baltimore, where Garagiola is a member of START, the group calling for building the Baltimore Red Line.  After the two subway lines are built, there is supposed to be money for a bus line on I-270.  Extending our Metro from Shady Grove to Germantown, which I have advocated, has been swept aside.

Since FY 2006, over $1 billion had been taken from the Transportation Trust Fund for other purposes.  Transportation  spending has declined from $3.64 billion to $3.47 billion while, the total state budget has increased 32.4%, Health and Mental Hygiene spending has increased 61% from $6.33 billion to $9.73 billion, and public debt has increased more than 60%.

There is no guarantee that money from the state sales tax, which Garagiola voted to increase 20%, and money from the corporate tax which now goes to transportation will continue to finance transportation after the huge new gas tax increase goes into effect.

The reason this regressive gas tax hike is a bad idea is that it clobbers the poor and middle class, increases the price of everything delivered by truck,  and sticks it to our most productive citizens---those commuting to work.

It is a shame that Germantown's state Senator Garagiola has chosen to support this big increase in a tax which is overwhelmingly unpopular in Germantown.  He probably thinks this vote will be forgotten by the 2014 elections.  I doubt it because everybody who goes to the gas station at least once a week will be thinking of his vote against their interests.