Monday, April 27, 2009
The long winding road
How did we go from avoiding a toll increase to hiking the sales tax by $900 million? Somewhere along the line, a great compromise opportunity was lost to boost the gas tax. Deval's belated 19-cents gas-tax proposal was pure overreach. Business groups' 25-cents proposal was shockingly stupid. Frightened lawmakers then ran away from anything having to do with a gas tax -- and now we're facing an all-purpose sales tax increase to partly fund transportation, state aid, the general fund, the Quinn bill, pork etc., etc., etc.
Update -- Good for Patrick.
How did we go from avoiding a toll increase to hiking the sales tax by $900 million? Somewhere along the line, a great compromise opportunity was lost to boost the gas tax. Deval's belated 19-cents gas-tax proposal was pure overreach. Business groups' 25-cents proposal was shockingly stupid. Frightened lawmakers then ran away from anything having to do with a gas tax -- and now we're facing an all-purpose sales tax increase to partly fund transportation, state aid, the general fund, the Quinn bill, pork etc., etc., etc.
Update -- Good for Patrick.
