There’s something for nearly every Oregonian to not like about Gov. Ted
Kulongoski’s proposed budget for the next biennium. Faced with sagging
tax revenues, Kulongoski wants to raise state fees on a whole passel of
people and activities.
Hunting licenses and fishing licenses will
cost a lot more. Nurses and psychologists will pay more for their
professional registration. Campers who stay in state parks will see
their nightly fees nearly double. The cost of a death certificate will
almost triple.
Even falconers will see the cost of their licenses (yes, you need a license to hunt with a bird in Oregon) jump by 125%.
The
most onerous and odious of the increases Kulongoski is proposing,
though, is raising the fee to register a motor vehicle. It’s now $54
for two years; Kulongoski wants to triple it to $162.
Looking at our neighboring states, registration fees there are bargains compared to what Kulongoski proposes. Washington dings you for $43.75 a year, or $87.50 every two years. California has a more complicated setup: You pay 0.65% of your vehicle’s value, which would work out to $65 a year on a $10,000 car. (Faced with a budget crisis far worse than Oregon’s, California is thinking about raising the fee to 1% or – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s idea – slapping on a flat $12 surcharge.)
And it needs to be remembered that Oregon’s average household income is significantly lower than those of our neighboring states. Scraping $162 together would be a challenge for low-income and even many middle-income households in these tough times. For a two-car family, registration would cost $324 every two years – nearly a full week’s pay for somebody working at the Oregon minimum wage of $8.40 an hour.
That’s the onerous part of Kulongoski’s idea. The odious part is that increasing the vehicle registration fee would amount to a regressive “flat tax.” Everybody from the lawyer with a $150,000 Mercedes to the construction laborer with a battered 14-year-old pickup would pay the same. It just ain’t right.
Kulongoski says he wants to raise registration fees to pay for improving the state’s highways, roads and bridges. They definitely need work, and there’d be the added benefit of creating jobs and putting money in the pockets of consumers. But there’s got to be a better way to do it than slamming everybody in the state with a hefty fee increase.
How about considering something like the California system, in which affluent drivers – who, presumably, are the ones with the expensive cars – would pay more than the folks who drive around in old beaters?
Alternatively – or in addition – why not talk about raising the state gas tax? In addition to being somewhat more progressive (people with big, expensive gas guzzlers would pay more) that approach would help encourage conservation.
We hope Kulongoski will reconsider his plan and join us in giving it THE BOOT in favor of some other option. If the ones we’ve suggested won’t work, maybe he could squeeze those falconers a little harder.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2008.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Raising the gas tax is the most equatable solution. Those who drive more impact the roads more. Those who drive heavier vehicles impact the roads more. The gas tax is the only way to fairly associate actual use with actual cost.
For someone like myself raising the registration is completely unfair. I have multiple vehicles – but can only drive one of them at a time. Rather than have one expensive vehicle I maintain several lower cost ones that are more suitable to specific purposes. A winter car, a decent pickup for when I need to haul things and a serious beater for getting out to remote locations for trail work or camping. Is it really fair that I pay three times more? I think not. It especially irks me to think that when I spend much of the summer commuting by bike I actually pay more than the average car commuter.
So much for the argument that bicyclists don’t contribute to road maintenance!
I agree that a gas tax increase would be far better than the other ideas. Use the roads more pay more, the perfect user fee. I have an old but beefy truck to haul my camper, tow my boat and do a few big truck chores a few times a year, the rest of the time I drive a much more fuel efficient vehicle. As the cost of registration and insurance goes up I am more often considering moving into a one size fits all rig which probably means burning more gas on a daily basis, is that what we want?
According to the State web site http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/CS/FTG/current_ft_rates.shtml
We havenâ ™t had a gas tax increase since 1993, thatâ ™s 15 years, do you think a dollar buys the same in road maintenance that it did 15 years ago? Itâ ™s about time we put some money into our roads.
Hi, me again, I was just thinking, if we need to raise funds how about we eliminate tax loopholes like the tax right off for second homes? The homeowner tax right off was originally social engineering intended to increase the number of people that could own their own homes and theoretically would foster community ownership. What exactly is the social benefit of the second home right off and is it worth it? I say its time to dump this subsidy for the well off.
It amazes me how much the liberals love to dip into someone elses pocket but listen to you cry when you have to pay.
This state needs a sales tax. If we don’t have one we will be taxed in other ways such as park fees, and vehicle registration. Is having terrible roads, a lacking education system, and few police around worth saving 10 cents on a gallon of milk?
“how about we eliminate tax loopholes like the tax right off for second homes?”
Good idea but I think that would have to be done at the federal level, wouldn’t it?
Another ripoff is deducting the “depreciation” on rental properties and other properties used for business. You get to write off the supposed “depreciation” of such properties even when their market value is actually increasing. (Of course that isn’t true in the present market, but generally it is.)
I’m not happy about rising fees and such, but the california registration isn’t just that.
California dings you with several other taxes along with your registration fees. So, yes, you pay the percentage of vehicle value, but you also get dinged with the CHP (California Highway Patrol Fee), current registration fee, Air Quality Fees, Smog Fees, then you get hit with a use tax for the original purchase. So that $65 that you state there is actually $152/year for a $10k vehicle and that’s not including the use tax of $800 you pay when you purchase that USED vehicle. Those are a lot of fees we don’t pay here. So, apples to apples we need to compare.
I also agree that increasing the gas tax would be better than vehicle fee increases. Not that I am a fan of any taxes.
In addition to being more fair to Oregonians, the state gets some tax revenue from out of state visitors on a gas tax. I would rather see a $.04 gas tax raise and no vehicle fee increase, if I had a choice. At least we could pay over time instead of all in one chunk and if we choose to drive less, we save money.
I know a lot of people in this state that have extra vehicles like trucks or classic cars, they use a few times a year. It seems idiotic to zap them for so much money. This is also troubling for people at or below the poverty line, I am sure a lot are living check-to-check and coming up with a huge sum of over $300 to register a car that might only be worth a couple thousand seems like an unfair tax.