By Supervisor 1st District, Roger Gitlin – August 29, 2018 –
Yesterday’s Del Norte County Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting was an interesting one. I made the motion for our Board to SUPPORT Proposition 6 which will be on your November ballot to repeal the Road Repair and Accountability Act also known as Senate Bill 1 (SB1). As you are well aware, the taxes on your gasoline rose 12 cents a gallon MORE, and diesel 20 cents a gallon MORE, AND your DMV fees were raised $25-$175 MORE to help pay for the first of ten annual installments of $5.2 billion to repair California’s roads. Folks, this is a bad law and needs to be repealed. Here’s why:
* The average financial impact on each of your vehicles is about $800 annually MORE than before SB 1was passed in 2016.
*In Del Norte County we have received $334,000 to fix our roads. Indeed, when Prop 6 PASSES (a recent California Poll shows that 58% of us in the Golden State support repeal of the Gas Tax), current projects will stop.
* I regret my vote to support SB1 after learning the impact of this terrible tax on our modest and economically-challenged County.
*75% of you Del Norte motorists cross the border to Oregon to purchase fuel at an average savings of 80 cents a gallon over the six stations which sell gas and diesel in Del Norte County. There is a huge loss of of local revenue when many of you buy other tax free items in Brookings.
*The abuse is rampant in Sacramento. In 2010, alone $1.8 billion was siphoned off the gas taxes collected at the pump in what was called the Gas Swap.We got ripped off by the State.
* California has a $16 billion surplus for fiscal year 2018/19. Use some of that surplus to pay for the roads we already paid for over the many, many years the State has been collecting gas taxes.
* This is a not a Republican or Democat issue. This is a MONEY issue that will cause great economic hardship for so many of us in Del Norte County and all the other 57 counties.
* The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 ( Supervisor 2nd District, Lori Cowan dissenting) to support YES on Proposition 6.
I hope you will VOTE YES on 6, in November.
its only 1/4 of a cent its a rip off of the people it needs to go sold as a tax to save the fair not for the general fund when will they stop yes its fraud
Whoever embezzled the tax money for use in other projects should be held criminally and civilly liable. It’s also fraud. When the voters vote to pay more taxes where the bill portrayed the tax to help a specific cause and it’s actually used for something else, this is fraud.
How many people are willing to address this problem directly? Virtually nobody.