10:06am: Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval

Bill raising DMV fees and gas tax clears a major hurdle

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — On a day when the Legislature and the governor traded shots over their handling of the state budget, a key component of Jim Justice’s highways proposal passed a major committee with a few questions but little contention.

Almost at the same time, three more bills representing tools in the governor’s highways package passed the House Finance Committee.

The bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday afternoon would increase the State Road Fund by raising gasoline taxes and fees at the Division of Motor Vehicles. The Finance Committee recommended that the bill be passed by the full Senate.

The flat rate part of the motor fuel excise tax would increase from 20.5 cents to 25 cents per gallon. Justice proposes raising several DMV fees, including the cost of vehicle registration from $30 to $50, reducing the cycle for required state inspections to every three years.

This is one of the bills Justice has been talking about since his inaugural address. He would like to take the increased funding for the state Road Fund and leverage it through bonding to produce millions of dollars for highway and bridge work.

Over and over, Justice has touted an estimate of 48,000 jobs resulting from his full highways package. That economic impact, the governor says, will result in more workers able to pay taxes — and, thus, put the state on better footing.

Another component of the full highways package is raising and expanding the tolls on some West Virginia highways — and then leveraging more money through bonding. And another is increasing the existing capacity for Garvee bonds, which are bonds leveraged against anticipated future federal highways funding.

After the Tuesday afternoon vote to raise the gasoline tax and the DMV fees, state Transportation Secretary Tom Smith said he was glad that aspect of the infrastructure package had cleared a major hurdle.

“All three of those together get you to the large numbers like $2.8 billion,” Smith said after today’s Senate Finance Committee meeting. “There’s a lot of moving parts, so all of this requires a partnership with the Legislature to try to make sure we have this increased revenue and the tools to do it.”

Smith said he’s observed elected leaders of all varieties recognizing that West Virginia’s roads and bridges are in real need of improvement.

“I think the reason for this is transportation touches all of our lives, and there’s a growing appreciation for that. There’s a growing appreciation that if we don’t take care of our roads, they’ll cost more to fix later,” Smith said.

“So I find it gratifying we seem to be moving in the direction of saying we have to have increased revenue for roadway work.”

Meanwhile, the House Finance Committee passed three bills from the Justice administration to give more flexibility to the state Department of Transportation in road construction projects.

The first is the Garvee bonds component of the governor’s highways package. The bill would increase the amount that could be used on Garvee bonds from the current $200 million to $500 million.

Under the bill the state would carve off a portion of federal highway funds it annually receives and take that money to the bond market. The bonds would be paid off within six to 12 years.

Transportation Secretary Smith, also appearing in that committee, said ideal projects would be bridges along Interstate 70 in Wheeling and the Interstate 64 bridge expansion project at Nitro.

The second bill in House Finance was meant to encourage public-private partnership highways projects. It removes a cost limit on such projects. Currently, projects have to be at least $20 million but Smith said he wouldn’t mind the lower floor of $10 million in the bill, possibly encouraging smaller projects.

And the third bill would alter the financial limitations on using the design-build program for highway construction.

Although the original bill would have eliminated the limitations, the committee passed a substitute bill that instead would increase an annual cap to $100 million with no more than $300 million in any year if the funds are carried over.

All three bills passed on voice vote and were sent to House floor.

The Senate’s Transportation Committee was considering versions of the same bills on Tuesday evening.

Jeff Jenkins contributed to this story.





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