CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Senate Finance Committee is the first stop at the State Capitol for a bill that would raise West Virginia’s sales tax, a list of DMV fees and the diesel tax to generate $250 million for road work in the Mountain State.
“My biggest disappointment, so far in two sessions I’ve been here, is that we just haven’t dealt with roads,” said Senator Ed Gaunch (R-Kanawha, 08).
To address that lack of action, he and more than 15 co-sponsors introduced SB 610 on Tuesday.
As proposed, about $100 million for roads would come out of a hike to the sales tax, taking it from the current six percent to 6.5 percent.
Increases to existing fees along with additional fees paid to the Division of Motor Vehicles would also go into the State Road Fund with the bill, including fees for registrations, titles, license plates, decals, and identification cards.
For example, the current $5 fee for the issuance of duplicate plates or registration cards would climb to $15.
Some of the fees, Gaunch noted, have not been raised in 50 years.
The legislation would create a new registration class for alternative fuel vehicles with corresponding registration fees and change the privilege tax rates and privilege tax calculations for motor vehicles.
Funding for the State Road Fund would also come from a five cent hike to the state tax on diesel fuel, as proposed.
“My preference would be to come to you and say, ‘I found $250 million in the budget. We’re going to divert that to highways,’ but I don’t get that chance,” said Gaunch said during an appearance on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline” which originated from the State Capitol where the 2016 Regular Legislative Session continues.
Of the additional costs, “It’s pennies a day compared to what the cost is of fixing these roads.”
Much of the proposed bill draws from the report Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Highways issued in 2015 which, according to Gaunch, “has laid around this building now for months and months and months.”
Three years in the making, the 58-page Blue Ribbon report concluded it would take $1.1 billion to adequately address road maintenance along with the expansion of West Virginia’s highway system.
“Just to maintain the highway system as it stands today” would require $750 million annually, according to that report.
One of the recommendations in that report was the continuation of tolls on the West Virginia Turnpike beyond 2019 to finance $1 billion in construction bonds.
Other proposals for new road revenues in the Blue Ribbon Commission’s report included increasing the motor vehicle sales tax from its current five percent to six percent to match the state sales tax, adding to fees paid to the state Division of Motor Vehicles and creating alternative fuel vehicle registration fees.
In 2011, then-Acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed a bill that would have raised DMV fees to generate $43 million for roads.
Gaunch argued the proposal he’s offering is long overdue.
“This is more than a roads bill, this is a jobs bill. We’ll see how serious some of the folks here are about creating jobs. This will create thousands of jobs,” he said.
The 2016 Regular Legislative Session ends on March 12.