One day soon, the Haines Borough will need a pile of money and the best way to get it is taxation that taps into pockets of special interest wealth rather than broad-based taxes that are generally regressive, forcing all to pay an equal percentage of their money for services that are not enjoyed so equally.
Exhibit A of these special taxes is a motor fuel tax. This money is needed because the borough owns and maintains many roads and has no money for rebuilding or resurfacing them. That money should rightly come from road users – drivers – in the form of a local tax applied to the cost of fuel at the pump.
Consider this: As recently as 1976, there was only one paved road in Haines – the Haines Highway, including Main Street. All other roads were gravel. Why? It wasn’t because there weren’t people here. During the logging boom of the 1970s, the local, year-round population may have been as high as it is today.
(Modern population figures inaccurately swing upwards because summer residents and others claim local residency for qualification for the Alaska Permanent Fund checks, the senior citizen tax exemption and other perks.)
Why most roads were gravel is that adding an asphalt surface is astronomically expensive. Just resurfacing existing asphalt roads in Alaska costs $5 – $10 million per mile. Our municipal government never has had that kind of money laying around. Our paved roads came from an oil-rich Alaska Legislature, which is no longer oil rich.
Which means that you and I will have to start paying for long-term upkeep of paved roads, which require resurfacing every dozen years or so. The borough could raise that money by increasing property taxes, or by increasing sales taxes, or it could begin by taxing the actual users of roads, by taxing the fuels used by cars.
Motor fuels taxes are old and universal. You pay 8 cents per gallon to the State of Alaska every time you fill up. That helps pay for the state’s roads. But right now, drivers don’t pay anything for using borough roads. One nickel per gallon to pay for borough roads would raise up to $75,000 per year, according to figures compiled by the borough.
That’s not much, but it’s a start on a savings account we could build to shore roads as needs arise.
Here’s the beauty of it: It’s fair. If you drive a large truck that takes a larger toll on local roads than, say a Volkswagen, you pay proportionately more money for road maintenance than the Volkswagen driver. If you decide to carpool with friends, significantly reducing your impact on roads, you also pay less fuel tax for roads.
Owning a piece of land doesn’t necessarily impact roads. Neither does buying groceries. Driving impacts roads, so a fuel tax serves as a kind of user fee, a fair and just one. Plus, if you don’t like it, you can carpool, bicycle or buy an electric car. The way out of the tax is by using less damaging and more thoughtful forms of transportation, which, appropriately enough, are also generally easier on the roads, anyway.
That makes a local fuel tax is a win-win-win. That’s why Anchorage adopted a dime-a-gallon tax two years ago, and why the Haines Borough, before increasing other taxes or stealing money from the tourism budget to pay for road upkeep, should take a serious look at one as well.