The gas tax patchwork.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Lane County Board of Commissioners backed away from a proposed county gasoline tax this week, partly because there was no easy way to avoid stepping on the toes of cities that have already enacted gas taxes of their own.

The real problem here is not the county or the cities - it's the state, which has abdicated its role in funding road maintenance.

The board was right to conclude that the county should not bolster its dwindling road fund at the cities' expense. At the same time, Lane County has road-repair needs that the board can't ignore forever. Moreover, a uniform, countywide plan for funding road repairs would be better than the emerging patchwork of city gas taxes. And a uniform statewide plan would be better yet - but Oregon hasn't offered increased assistance to local governments in more than a decade.

Cottage Grove, Eugene, Oakridge, Springfield and Veneta have adopted city gas taxes to pay for street repair projects. Florence voters will decide the fate of a city gas tax in Tuesday's election. A county tax could either supplement or replace those city taxes. The cities aren't interested in any county tax that would have the net result of reducing their road repair budgets. They're also wary of any plan that would decrease the amount of money they currently receive as their share of the county road fund.

These local gas taxes are a new feature of the transportation landscape. From 1919, when Oregon enacted the nation's first gasoline tax, to the end of the 20th century, Oregonians supported city, county and state roads by paying a single state gas tax, currently 24 cents per gallon. About 40 percent of gas tax revenues are shared with cities and counties.

The Legislature, however, has not approved an increase in the state gas tax since 1991. The cost of road repairs has climbed each year since then, as has the number of cars and trucks on state and local roads. Improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency have kept gas tax revenues from growing at the same rate as costs and traffic volume.

The 2001 Legislature created a Road User Fee Task Force to study new methods of paying to maintain the road network, such as a mileage-based fee that all cars and trucks would pay. Similarly, Eugene and Springfield have examined alternatives to the gas tax, such as a transportation utility fee.

At the state and local levels, such innovations have been set aside in favor of the familiar, easy-to-collect gas tax. The difference has been that local governments have been willing to adopt or increase gas taxes, while the Legislature has not.

City, county and state roads form a single transportation network, and it makes sense to maintain it as such. If local governments' share of state gas tax revenues had stayed within shouting distance of the cost of road repairs, local gas taxes would not be needed. Variations in the level of taxation between neighboring jurisdictions could have been avoided. Statewide funding would also prevent the imminent emergence of city-by-city or county-by-county differences in the road network's degree of disrepair.

Officials in nearly half of Lane County's cities have decided they could not wait for the state or the county to protect their investments in roads, and by default assumed the responsibility for gas tax-funded road repairs. Lane County won't be able to avoid taking similar action for long; it will need to find a gas tax sharing formula that's fair to the cities and unincorporated areas alike.

In both cases, local governments are doing what traditionally has been, and still should be, the state's job.