Maryland Transportation Expert Peter Samuel
On the "Preposterous" Transportation Investment Act Just Signed by the Governor

HB5 is preposterous. Neither the bill nor the accompanying analysis or statements provide any justification for these tax increases. There is not a word on what the extra money being extracted from motorists is to be spent on. Apparently it goes into the political slush fund called the Transportation Trust Fund. Where it goes from there is apparently a subject not a fit for public viewing. The authors of the bill don't deign its use to be worthy of consideration.

Some of the increases are huge. The charge for issuing the certificate of title fee is more than doubled ($23 to $50) and the vehicle excise tax goes up 20% (from 5 to 6%). These are the worst kind of taxes - on simple ownership of a vehicle. There is some logic to charges or taxes related to vehicle use because use of a vehicle takes up scarce roadspace, adds to tailpipe emissions, consumes fuel, and so forth. But simple ownership of a vehicle does none of this.

This bill takes us in entirely the wrong direction - imposing deadweight costs on our citizens.

There is no need at all for higher taxes and charges. Transportation system use can be charged for directly through fees (tolls and fares) and each mode should discipline its spending according to the revenues customers pay for use. Roads and transit are utilities which should be investor owned and pay their way like electric utilities, telecommunications and so forth. Reducing the tax subsidies is the direction in which we should be moving so the transportation service providers - - - rely more on direct use charges.

Another word about the more than doubling of titling charges.

Titling of vehicles is a legitimate and necessary activity. It is needed to establish property rights in vehicles.

But titling should be done on behalf of vehicle owners at as low a cost as it can be efficiently and properly done. The state should seek competitive bids to conduct titling and award the work to the best value bidder. Its job is to monitor the work in the public interest.

Instead of trying to get titling done efficiently this administration sees its monopoly of titling as an opportunity to set titling charges at levels quite unrelated to costs to rip off motorists on behalf of a politicians' slush fund. This is intolerable.

Peter Samuel is a transportation writer in Frederick MD, a senior fellow at Reason Foundation, and editor of TOLLROADSnews 102 West 3rd St Unit 1 Frederick MD 21701-5333 US tel (1) 301 631 1148 mob 240 446 9736 editor@tollroadsnews.com http://tollroadsnews.com