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Algae-Ok t1_iueebre wrote

The gas prices are caused by a policy he implemented when he left

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peter-doubt t1_iuetxq3 wrote

Please refresh our recollection

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joe_digriz t1_iughwej wrote

About a year before he left office, he "negotiated" (read: did the Republican thing of shutting down parts of government - in this case, the Department of Transportation - until he got what he wanted) with the legislature both an immediate increase in the gas tax (over 20 cents/gal) and a reformulation of how it worked.

In addition to the base rate, which the tax cannot go below, it basically relies on two major factors - how much revenue it generated during the previous year, and how much it is projected to generate during the upcoming year. (There's also a small adjustment for inflation.) That formula then determines if the tax goes up or down from year-to-year, and by how much.

It was announced in Sept the gas tax would be about a penny less than it was last year, thanks to the increase in driving as people are trying to move past the pandemic, but that still puts us just outside the top-10 for gas tax as compared to other states.

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Algae-Ok t1_iuhu7yl wrote

Also it was kinda of a exchange where they raised the gas prices and reduced the sales tax on certain retail items. It was weirdly done because we all knew that money would not go back to the roads to be fixed.

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joe_digriz t1_iuhxu6w wrote

Oh, right, I forgot about the sales tax part. And the "don't worry, the funds are *constitutionally protected* from being used for anything but the Transportation Trust Fund" thing. Right, because that's really stopped them from reallocating (excuse me... "borrowing") the funds before.

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peter-doubt t1_iugi9vg wrote

If I recall we were near the top 10 almost forever.

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