Roads, taxpayers win one.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Oregon's two-pronged system for taxing trucks won a key legal victory last week in Marion County Circuit Court. The win is welcome news for the state's taxpayers and for its highways and bridges.

At issue was a challenge by the American Trucking Association to Oregon's weight-mile tax. The state levies two different taxes on trucks: the weight-mile tax, which is based on the truck's size, weight, number of axles and miles traveled, and a separate, so-called flat tax paid by haulers of logs, wood chips, sand and gravel. The weight-mile tax is structured to levy higher taxes on bigger trucks that cause more damage to roads and bridges. The ATA sued to have the two-tiered system overturned, claiming it unconstitutionally favors local truckers over interstate trucking.

After a two-week trial in December, Circuit Judge Pro Tem Claudia Burton - in a ruling made public last week - said: "The plaintiffs (the ATA) have the burden of proof and I have been unable to find sufficient evidence in the record to justify finding Oregon's truck tax system unconstitutional."

Numbers alone tend to support the state's existing truck-taxing system. Eighty-eight percent of Oregon carriers pay the weight-mile tax. And, as Judge Burton noted, wood-chip truckers paying the flat tax usually end up paying a higher rate than weight-mile truckers.

"Considering the record as a whole, I cannot find that the availability of the flat fee option for certain commodities creates an undue burden on interstate commerce," Burton said in her ruling. "If there is any effect at all from the small rate difference, it is incidental."

The case was not a slam dunk for the state going into trial. As The Oregonian reported, an Idaho court ruled two years ago that Idaho's two-tiered truck-taxing system was unconstitutional and ordered a refund of $124 million. To settle, the Idaho Legislature agreed to repeal the weight-mile tax and pay the truckers $27 million. Over the past two decades, the ATA has successfully sought to have the weight-mile tax eliminated in 15 states. Oregon remains only one of four states with the tax.

In Oregon, according to the state Department of Transportation, a win by the ATA would have meant a potential refund of some $60 million. But there was more involved in the lawsuit than money.

Oregon's system is properly designed so that trucks that cause the most damage to roads and bridges pay more to repair them. While automobiles are taxed primarily through gasoline taxes because they damage the roads less than trucks, the weight-mile tax seeks to balance the damage-vs.-tax equation. That's a fair means of ensuring that the costs of road and bridge maintenance are shared equitably among different classes of vehicles.