LANSING – The Michigan Legislature was unable to muster the votes Thursday for a comprehensive long-term solution to raise more money for the state’s battered roads and bridges as anti-tax sentiment, the looming election and other factors gridlocked the Senate on the issue. Michigan voters will remember this on election day.
For those backing the issue – Governor Rick Snyder, many legislators and seemingly every major interest group at the Capitol – Thursday’s collapse could not have gone much worse. Not only did the Senate put up another gasoline tax proposal for a vote only to see it defeated and adjourn without a comprehensive fix, but Sen. Roger Kahn (R-Saginaw Township), a vital backer of more roads funding, stormed out of the Senate in frustration.
Snyder, meeting with reporters just after 9 p.m. in the Capitol, tried to put the best face on the situation.
“We had a great dialogue in the Legislature that hadn’t taken place before and a number of bills have gone through the process so progress is being made. So let’s look on the bright side. We’ve moved close to getting a long-term solution in place,” he said.
Asked how he could define multiple defeats of various proposals on the Senate floor as positive progress, Snyder said: “You can decide if you want to look at the negative. It came to the point of people having discussions going through and putting bills out and potentially having votes and passing some of those bills.”
Any glimmer of hope that some kind of a gas tax bill, big or small, probably vanished with Kahn when he departed the Capitol. His absence further complicated matters for Senate Republicans, who no longer had on their own the 26 votes needed to put immediate effect onto bills.
The road funding failure overshadowed the Legislature’s completion of the 2014-15 fiscal year budget, sending the final piece, the omnibus budget bill (HB 5314 ) for departments and agencies, to Snyder. Prior to adjourning for what was expected to be the last substantive session prior to the August 5 primary, the Legislature also wrapped up work on ending the driver responsibility fees and barring minors from buying e-cigarettes and, in something of a surprise, sent a bill to Snyder softening the state’s mandated curriculum.
In one last gasp, the Senate put up for a vote an S-12 version of HB 5477 that would have maintained the 19 cents per gallon gasoline tax, but let it rise at the rate of inflation. It would have meant little immediate new revenue.
But then the Senate did to that plan what it did to all the others on raising the fuel tax: defeat it. The Senate rejected the bill on a 17-20 vote, three yes votes short of passage.
Not long afterward, the Senate adjourned until July 16. After that, the Senate returns August 13, but will not resume its regular schedule until September 9.
Stymied for years in their push for a comprehensive answer to raising more money for roads, backers thought they finally had the ammunition needed to persuade recalcitrant legislators to raise taxes for roads. An extremely cold winter with heavy snows wreaked havoc on the state’s roads, turning them into buckled, pothole-ridden thoroughfares.
The situation for the first time in nearly 20 years got the public’s attention and suddenly roads shot to the top of voters’ main issues in polls. Even with the election year fully at hand, there appeared to be an opening and legislative leaders from both parties went for it despite the inherent challenge of passing a major tax increase just two months before the August primary.
The House got the ball rolling with an interim move to earmark revenues that now go to the General Fund to transportation and convert the state’s 19 cents per gallon tax on gasoline and 15 cents per gallon tax on diesel fuel to a 6 percent tax on the wholesale price of all fuels, a level that would not have raised any immediate additional revenues.
Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) decided to go bigger, eventually putting before the Senate a plan that would have gradually increased the new percentage tax to 15 percent over a period of years. But that plan, an S-9 substitute to HB 5477, suffered a crushing setback Wednesday night in the Senate, falling three votes short of having enough support to be put up for final passage.
Once that plan failed, Richardville instead proposed a series of much more incremental proposals that would have raised little new revenue, all of which failed to get support. The latest, an S-12 substitute, would have kept the gasoline tax at 19 cents per gallon, but allowed it to rise with inflation, but even that face-saving measure failed Thursday, defeated on a 17-20 vote.
Anti-tax activists celebrated.
“By rejecting tax hikes, the Michigan Senate scored a major victory for families and businesses who already pay high enough taxes on gas,” said Scott Hagerstrom of Americans for Prosperity-Michigan. “We’ve seen a tremendous level of activism from grassroots citizens who instinctively understand that a massive tax hike isn’t the only way to fix Michigan’s roads.”
But the collapse of a comprehensive plan like the one rejected Thursday left backers of more road funding disappointed, although they voiced some satisfaction that a “do-nothing plan,” as Mike Nystrom of the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association called it, failed to pass too.
“I just don’t think they’ve found the right answer yet. The public needs to keep the pressure up. The citizens want our roads and bridges fixed. In the end, our elected officials have to find the political will to do the right thing. And obviously the right thing did not entail going home without a revenue-neutral fix,” he said. “It’s really disappointing that the Legislature has decided to go home without resolving this much-needed issue.”
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