“I urge the Legislature to work with me this session to begin to fix and improve Minnesota’s transportation systems”, Dayton said in a news release. He said Senate Democrats would likely prefer a proposal with a gas tax increase higher than the 5-cent tax Dayton proposed, while the governor’s proposed $400 million license tab increase would be a “very, very hard sell” in the Senate. GOP leaders have refused to consider a gas tax.
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Dayton’s proposals put $600 million into the state’s highway fund, which results in about $400 million for state highways and $240 million for local roads.
“We’re really staking out positions where the public is on these issues and the public is not going to swallow a doubling of their tab fees”, he said after meeting with the governor. Republicans who control the House say existing taxes and some extra cash can do the job.
“If we continue to avoid these problems, they will only get worse”.
“We need a bonding bill this week, along with a transportation bill”, he said, suggesting there’s still time to pass both measures. He says the $300 million bite it would take out of the state’s general fund is too large.
House Republicans say Dayton’s proposals are encouraging, though they still oppose any suggestion of a gas tax.
The big concession was agreeing to $100 million in new revenue from license tab fee increases.
While the House and Dayton look for $600 million a year in new transportation money a year, the Senate plan would be almost $1 billion. Dayton also would allow a Twin Cities sales tax increase for transit. He said Dayton did not move far from his original plan. Democrats have said the state needs to raise some money in order pay for a decade’s worth of repairs to Minnesota’s roads and bridges, while Republicans argue lawmakers should use existing revenues instead of raising taxes when the state has a budget surplus. “But we also have to understand that roads and bridges are priority one”.
Republicans didn’t include mass transit in their proposal Tuesday.
At a news conference shortly after Daudt spoke, Dayton ripped into the Republicans’ intransigence and called their plan “fiction”.
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Dayton has said that $600 million figure for him is non-negotiable.
