MauledAgain

It’s time once again to visit the mileage-based road fee. I have written about it on numerous occasions, in posts such as Tax Meets Technology on the Road, Mileage-Based Road Fees, Again, Mileage-Based Road Fees, Yet Again, Change, Tax, Mileage-Based Road Fees, and Secrecy, Pennsylvania State Gasoline Tax Increase: The Last Hurrah?, Making Progress with Mileage-Based Road Fees, Mileage-Based Road Fees Gain More Traction, Looking More Closely at Mileage-Based Road Fees, The Mileage-Based Road Fee Lives On, Is the Mileage-Based Road Fee So Terrible?, Defending the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Liquid Fuels Tax Increases on the Table, Searching For What Already Has Been Found, Tax Style, Highways Are Not Free, Mileage-Based Road Fees: Privatization and Privacy, Is the Mileage-Based Road Fee a Threat to Privacy?, So Who Should Pay for Roads?, Between Theory and Reality is the (Tax) Test, Mileage-Based Road Fee Inching Ahead, Rebutting Arguments Against Mileage-Based Road Fees, On the Mileage-Based Road Fee Highway: Young at (Tax) Heart?, To Test The Mileage-Based Road Fee, There Needs to Be a Test, What Sort of Tax or Fee Will Hawaii Use to Fix Its Highways?, And Now It’s California Facing the Road Funding Tax Issues, If Users Don’t Pay, Who Should?, Taking Responsibility for Funding Highways, Should Tax Increases Reflect Populist Sentiment?, When It Comes to the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Try It, You’ll Like It, Mileage-Based Road Fees: A Positive Trend?, Understanding the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Tax Opposition: A Costly Road to Follow, Progress on the Mileage-Based Road Fee Front?, Mileage-Based Road Fee Enters Illinois Gubernatorial Campaign, Is a User-Fee-Based System Incompatible With Progressive Income Taxation?. Will Private Ownership of Public Necessities Work?, Revenue Problems With A User Fee Solution Crying for Attention, Plans for Mileage-Based Road Fees Continue to Grow, Getting Technical With the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Once Again, Rebutting Arguments Against Mileage-Based Road Fees, Getting to the Mileage-Based Road Fee in Tiny Steps, Proposal for a Tyre Tax to Replace Fuel Taxes Needs to be Deflated, A Much Bigger Forward-Moving Step for the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Another Example of a Problem That the Mileage-Based Road Fee Can Solve, Some Observations on Recent Articles Addressing the Mileage-Based Road Fee, Mileage-Based Road Fee Meets Interstate Travel, If Not a Gasoline Tax, and Not a Mileage-Based Road Fee, Then What?>, Try It, You Might Like It (The Mileage-Based Road Fee, That Is) , The Mileage-Based Road Fee Is Superior to This Proposed “Commercial Activity Surcharge”, The Mileage-Based Road Fee Is Also Superior to This Proposed “Package Tax” or “Package Fee”, Why Delay A Mileage-Based Road Fee Until Existing Fuel Tax Amounts Are Posted at Fuel Pumps?, Using General Funds to Finance Transportation Infrastructure Not a Viable Solution, In Praise of the Mileage-Base Road Fee, What Appears to Be Criticism of the Mileage-Based Road Fee Isn’t, Though It Is a Criticism of How Congress Functions, Ignorance and Propaganda, A New Twist to the Mileage-Based Road Fee, The Mileage-Based Road Fee: Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Than the Alternatives, Some Updates on the Mileage-Based Road Fee, How to Pay for Street Reconstruction, Stop the "Stop EV Freeloading Act" Because The Mileage-Based Road Fee Is a Much Better Way to Go, Why Is Road Repair and Maintenance Funding So Difficult for Public Officials to Figure Out?, Should (Will) Implementing the Mileage-Based Road Fee Cause Privatization of Highway Infrastructure?, The Freedom Caucus Doesn’t Understand that the Mileage-Based Road Fee is “PRO-Freedom,” Not the Opposite, A Mileage-Based Road Fee by Any Other Name?, and Does the Mileage-Based Road Fee Work for Local Road Maintenance?

Today reader Morris alerted me to a development in Washington state with respect to a proposed mileage-based road fee. According to this report, bills have been introduced in both the Washington Senate and the Washington House to impose a vehicle miles traveled tax, a different name for a mileage-based road fee, though using the word tax is disappointing because what is being considered is in most respects a user fee. Reader Morris directed my attention to two previous commentaries, both arising from reports he noticed and shared with me, dealing with similar proposals in Washington, Getting Technical With the Mileage-Based Road Fee and A Much Bigger Forward-Moving Step for the Mileage-Based Road Fee.

Reader Morris asked me two questions. He asked, “Does the proposed legislation solve the problems mentioned in [those two commentaries]? He also asked, “What do you think about this proposed legislation?”

I answer the first question in two steps. First, in a href = https://mauledagain.blogspot.com/2020/02/#5924033084063958184>A Much Bigger Forward-Moving Step for the Mileage-Based Road Fee I didn’t mention problems. I explained that the Washington State Transportation Commission had released a studying “the feasibility of transitioning from the gas tax to a road user assessment system of paying for transportation.” I noted that “It’s time to acknowledge that it’s time for change.” Second, it’s in Getting Technical With the Mileage-Based Road Fee that I criticized legislation that was at that time proposed in Washington. I criticized plans to use a portion of mileage-based road fees for purposes other than those stated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the Washington Constitution, which requires that all license fees, fuel excise taxes, and other highway revenue be used “exclusively for highway purposes.” I noted that:

The overriding issue is not one restricted to the use of revenues generated by a mileage-based road fee. It is an issue that affects every tax or user fee enacted by a legislature other than, perhaps, taxes destined for a “general fund.” To make certain that the revenues from a mileage-based road fee are not diverted as has happened with gasoline tax revenues and other user fee revenues, those drafting the implementing legislation must be certain to restrict the uses of those revenues. For Washington state, and other jurisdictions with similar restrictive language, the concern is that the 18th amendment does not apply to mileage-based road fees. That means an amendment to the amendment is necessary, though perhaps the same outcome could be accomplished by inserting expenditure restrictions into the enacting statute. I don’t know Washington constitutional law well enough to conclude what specifically would need to be done. As the writer of the News Tribune article put it, “State lawmakers, therefore, shouldn’t mess around with a mileage tax unless they have a parallel discussion about preserving the original intent of the gas tax.” I totally agree.

The most recent proposal attempts to circumvent the limitation in the Washington Constitution by adding a ten percent surcharge to generate funds for other purposes. It seems to me that the surcharge is nothing more than breaking the fee into two components, re-labeling the ten percent portion as something else, and then funneling monies paid by road users to other purposes. As I have pointed out many times, it’s one thing to impose taxes to generate monies for general funds, but it’s a very different, and improper, approach to charge people a user fee for something they are not using. Imagine setting up a municipal landfill and charging 10 cents for every pound of refuse deposited and another 15 cents per pound that is used to pay for snow removal. If snow removal is going to be funded by a separate fee it ought to be imposed on everyone who benefits from snow removal, which is a group much larger than those using the landfill. So, no, the proposed legislation does not solve the diverted funds problem.

To the second question, I reply that in general I support any steps to shift from fuel taxes to mileage-based road fees. If some changes are made, the proposed legislation is a good starting point. Some people are criticizing the proposed legislation as a violation of privacy because it requires reporting mileage to the state either by odometer readings or GPS tracking. Reporting odometer readings does not violate privacy. Many, perhaps all, states require those readings each time vehicle registration is renewed. They also require reporting of insurance coverage information, including the name of the insurance company and the policy number. It appears that what concerns people is the use of GPS tracking. I suppose the reason for including it in the legislation is a lack of confidence in self-reported odometer readings, though odometer readings are also taken when vehicles undergo state safety inspections and thus there is a check on misreported readings. GPS tracking would be an almost necessity if states limited the fee to miles driven on state roads and imposed the fee on out-of-state vehicles but that fine-tuning requires a national compact that isn’t yet close to fruition. To deal with privacy concerns, some states let private companies run the mileage-based road fee programs, but that doesn’t solve the privacy issue because it puts data in the hands of non-accountable private sector operators rather than in the hands of government personnel who ultimately are subject to accountability at the ballot box. The Washington proposal would permit law enforcement to access “personally identifying information reported” through court order, but it’s unclear what information would be available that isn’t already available, as even GPS information can be obtained by court order. So the surcharge needs to be jettisoned, and the collection and sharing of information needs to be redesigned so that abuses are foreclosed.

So again we wait to see what happens.

I have been a teacher for a very long time. I shared this story 16 years ago in How and Why I Became a Law School Professor. What I did not explore in that blog post was something that I did not, until now, feel compelled to add to the story.

Throughout my life I have known and spoken with many teachers. I have had discussions with those who taught me, friends and relatives who are or have been teachers, former students who are or have been teachers, and colleagues, neighbors, and others who are or have been teacehers. The are people who taught not only law school and undergraduate classes, but also K through 12 classes. When I heard their stories, I realized I was lucky. I was spared most of the challenges they faced.

I was forutunate that in all of my teaching situations, almost all of the students I encountered wanted to learn. Few were being educated against their will. Almost all of them were capable of learning what they were studying, though some did so easily and some needed to make much more of an effort. More than a few grumbled, but many of those students, months or years later, took the time to explain that they finally understood what was required of them to learn. These are some of the joys of teaching, helping those who want to learn accomplish what they set out to do.

But there are sorrows in teaching. In my formal and informal teaching roles over the years, I rarely encountered someone who did not want to learn. But most of the teachers I have known, particularly those in the K-12 schools, have not had the comfort of trying to educate people who want to learn. They must deal with those who don't want to learn because they'd rather spend their time playing or doing things that get them into trouble. Whether they are that way because they are being wilful or because they are dealing with emotional or other issues doesn't remove the challenge, though it can affect how the challenge is met. Many of these teachers also encounter students who lack the requisite abilities, often because they are misplaced in terms of grade level or curriculum, either through school system flaws or, worse, parental denials of reality.

The impetus for this post is the culmination of what I have read and observed over the past 15 years. It seems to me that a disppointing number of people do not want to learn. Many of those people have the capability to learn but choose not to make the effort. Some lack the desire to think for themselves, and many lack the ability to think for themselves. Perhaps some never had the opportunity to learn to think for themselves, having been through a limited education process of receiving and regurgitating words and paragraphs. Others had that opportunity but chose to let it slide by, choosing instead to cut class, ignore homework, cheat, and use parental influence to obtain approvals of which they were not deserving.

Why does this matter? It matters because the inablity to think for one's self causes a person to be more susceptible to misinformation, lies, scams, the wiles of con artists, and the propaganda of domestic and foreign adversaries. Those who pay attention to what is now happening and who have and use the ability to think for themselves surely can see the consequences of failing to think for one's self, failing to distinguish between fact and opinion, and failing to analyze allegations and information.

The ability and willingness to learn is what has fueled the evolution of the species. It is what generates progress, a word that meets antipathy when expressed as its adjective. Its absence generates the opposite, the adjective formed from the verb regress. And that is what is going to happen if society fails to persuade itself that education matters, that the ability to engage in analysis is important, and that the ability to think for one's self is essential.

I don't regret having been a teacher for a long time. I do not regret having spent a good part of my life engaged in education. I do regret that what I and others have been doing will turn out to have been insufficient to prevent society from backsliding into what some of us thought had been put behind us.