Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for governor of California, has been asked whether drivers should be charged by the mile, and he has given an answer that a tax accountant can respect: he did not say no.
"Everything should be on the table," Becerra told KCRA's California Politics 360. "Our roads aren't maintained just by some magic wand. We have to pay for it." He added that people who drive electric vehicles, and don't buy gas, should "absolutely" pay to repair the roads too.
Let's run the numbers, since nobody in Sacramento will.
California drivers already pay a state gas tax that a debate moderator put at 63 cents a gallon this month. The state is studying a mileage charge, with a report due by the end of this year. Becerra, according to KCRA, is also preparing a new tax on the state's richest residents. So the current plan, as reported, is: keep the tax on the gallons, consider a tax on the miles, and add a tax on the people who can afford both. The table is getting crowded. Someone should check whether the table is taxed.
Republican candidate Steve Hilton, holding a press conference in Sanger on his promise of $3 gas, estimated a mileage tax could cost drivers about $1,000 a year. That is his figure, not a state figure, and it deserves the same scrutiny as any campaign number. For accounting purposes, $1,000 a year is $83.33 a month, or about $2.74 a day. That is a cup of coffee every single day, for the privilege of having already paid the tax on the gas.
"They never stop gouging you," Hilton said, and promised a veto.
Becerra's argument has a certain logic. Electric cars use the roads and don't buy gas, so they skip the gas tax. The state's answer to fewer people paying a tax is not to spend less on the thing the tax pays for. It is to find a new meter. This is what accountants call "revenue diversification" and what drivers call "the odometer."
A note on the phrase "magic wand." California has spent decades and many billions of dollars on a high-speed rail line that, as of this writing, carries zero passengers. KCRA reported Becerra would likely remove the rail authority's CEO. That's a start. Removing one CEO from a project that has not moved a single rider does not, however, repave Interstate 5. The magic wand was the train. It also wasn't free.
Here is the full ledger for a California driver under the "everything on the table" plan. Assets: one car, one commute. Liabilities: the gas tax, the mileage study, the eventual mileage charge, registration, insurance, and a governor's race decided Tuesday. Net position: still in traffic.
The candidate is right about one thing. Roads are not maintained by a magic wand. In California, they are maintained by a magic wallet, and it belongs to you.
Everything is on the table. Including, it turns out, the table.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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