🚀 go-pugleaf

The following is a commentary written by Ross Capon, co-chair of the 
Action Committee for Transit, Montgomery County.  The remarks in [] are  
mine for clarity.

Earth to Annapolis:
Counties Need the Power to Tax Gasoline*

by Ross Capon, ACT Co-Chair

   At every turn we hear government cannot do things onece taken for  
granted.  A few years ago, a prominent state legistlator told an ACT  
meeting, "With light rail, you're really on to something!"
   Today, the most promising prospective Montgomery County light rail line  
is on... a siding, waiting for the day when the county executive believes  
we need light rail "now" and a governer revives Gov. Schaefer's now-void  
offer to fund the project.  Perhaps even while some of us are alive.
   One legistlator recently told me to take heart because what the Clean  
Air Act and the new flexible highway law will allow.  Maybe
   For now, though Planning Board staff is seriously working to -- get  
this! -- add a lane to Georgia Avenue between the Beltway and 16th.  
Street... making it easier for people to drive their cars above our  
expensive new subway line.
   And gasoline prices continue to fall -- regular at Georgia Ave. and  
Randolph Rd. was $1.039 a gallon on March 2, ten cents cheaper than Nov.  
8.  That 9% drop would be even greater if you adjust for inflation.   
Indeed, in real terms, gasoline cost less here today than it did 40 years  
ago.
   By international standards, the gasoline taxes we pay or are likely to  
pay are obscenely low and the rail transit network we support is obscenely  
tiny and undertutilized.  The gasoline tax is about[almost $4 in France]  
$3 a gallon in Italy, $2 in Japan, and well over $1 in Great Britain and  
West Germany.  Our federal tax is 14 cents; New Yorkers pay state taxes  
totaling 30 cents; Marylanders pay 18.5 cents now, 23.5 cents proposed.
   Also "quaint" by international standards is our policy of earmarking  
most gasoline tax revenues for highways.  In Great Britain and the  
Netherlands only 25% of gas tax monies go to highway programs; in most  
other European countries only about 33%.
   Meanwhile, our politicians still talk about the need to get people out  
of their cars and still vote to raise transit fares.
   Why is the legistlature so timid about increasing the gasoline tax  
[because of all the hicks from Western MD and the Eastern shore] and  
earmarking most of it for transit and for non-transportation purposes.
   Because our politicians believe the public [mostly rednecks from guess  
where the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland] thinks cheap gasoline is  
more important than providing desperately needed transit improvements,  
more important than keeping Montgomery County libraries open the week  
after Christmas, more important than providing school "amenities" such as  
activity buses that enable kids in extracurricular activities to go home  
late. 
   Ours may be remembered as the society that sacrificed everything for  
cheap gasoline.  In the March 30th. episode of the TV show "Northern  
Exposure" someone observed that human beings are basically "monkeys with  
car keys."  That's truer than many of us care to think!
   It's silly for Montgomery County to have an "energy tax" that doesn't  
apply to gasoline.  At the very least, the legistlature should let  
counties impose their own gasoline taxes.  Then counties like Montgomery  
with good public transit and the potential for more would not have energy  
policy held hostage to rural counties with minimal public transportation  
or potential for same.
   How's that for good government?  Bring an important powe close to the  
poeple!
   The public is ready to listen to common sense from legistlators or  
council members.  The public is ready to accept a stiffer gasoline tax  
with the right explnations, along the lines suggested above.  Do we want  
kids to spend the entire Christmas vacation at the mall [and we spend  
$7,000 a student so they can forget it all hanging out at the local  
shopping mall) so we can close the libraries and enjoy cheap gasoline?   
Will your legistlator start the ball rolling?