In a missive filled with the usual blather about “tax and spend” Democrats and “fiscal sanity” this week, House Republican leaders breathlessly announced a remarkable discovery. People in cities, because there are more of them, collectively pay more in vehicle registration fees than people in small towns. Remarkable.

A surcharge – from $30 to $75 per vehicle depending on its weight – was added as a temporary two-year measure in 2009 but, at $45 million, it quickly became a major source of funding for the state Department of Transportation. With gas prices rising, fuel efficiency increasing and motorists driving less, department revenue is down by $10 million.

Cut $45 million from his budget, Transportation Commissioner George Campbell told lawmakers, and he would have to eliminate 845 of the department’s 1,800 employees, put off projects like replacing the crumbling Sewalls Falls Bridge in Concord, cut the miles of road that could be repaved annually in half, lose federal matching funds, and watch the state’s infrastructure sink further into disrepair.

House Speaker Bill O’Brien and Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt’s “car tax” report came out almost in tandem with a report by a group called Transportation for America which rated the condition of New Hampshire’s bridges 11th worst in the nation. Some progress has been made since 1994, when then-Transportation Commissioner Charles O’Leary half-jokingly advised motorists on the state’s bridges to “drive fast and not look back,” but 372 of New Hampshire’s 2,408 bridges are structurally deficient.

The registration surcharge is an annoyance and, for motorists on the economic margin, perhaps even a hardship. But eliminate it and the condition of the state’s roads and bridges, already bad in many cases, will get worse fast. Hitting one pothole that shouldn’t be there can cost far more than $30. How much is avoiding an accident caused by poor road conditions or maintenance worth? Who deserves the blame when a bridge collapses? Until

Article source: http://feeds.stateline.org/~r/StatelineorgRss-Transportation/~3/985cDJVJz-s/killing-car-tax-will-make-things-worse