A bill to tweak last year’s massive restructuring of the transportation system is nearing the finish line in the Legislature.
SB72 will do everything from dump a controversial new name for the Utah Transit Authority to allow owners of clean-fuel cars to lower their new higher registration fees by volunteering to be guinea pigs for a new tax on the miles they drive.
The House passed SB72 unanimously Tuesday. The Senate-passed bill now goes to the full House for final consideration.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill that vastly restructured transportation taxes and the scandal-tainted UTA, including replacing its part-time, 16-member board with a new full-time, three-member commission seen as better able to oversee it.
At that time, the legislation ordered renaming UTA as Transit District Utah. But the agency complained the name switch on everything from signs to buses, uniforms and stationery could cost $50 million. Lawmakers then had second thoughts, and announced they would go back to the UTA name. The new bill formally does that.
“We had way too much fun” with that name change, “and everybody paid for it,” joked Sen. Wayne Harper, R-Taylorsville, sponsor of the bill.
The bill also contains a big change for owners of electric and hybrid vehicles.
Such cars now largely escape gasoline tax that helps fund highways. So last year, lawmakers imposed higher registration fees on them: $60 for electric cars, $26 for plug-in hybrids and $10 for gas hybrids. They will increase annually until 2021, when electric cars will pay $120, plug-in hybrids will pay $52 and gas hybrids face $20.
The new bill gives owners of such cars the option to participate instead in a “road user charge” pilot program to begin next year.
It will impose a tax for every mile driven — so vehicles that driver fewer miles pay lower taxes. The maximum possible charge is the same as the new higher registration fees.
Harper said the state may eventually switch all drivers to such a program as it has seen gas tax revenues drop as cars get better mileage. However, he said the state needs some “voluntary guinea pigs” to help ensure such a program works.
The new bill also simplifies and clarifies restrictions on local transportation taxes, making it easier to use them not only on roads but mass transportation and projects for pedestrians and bikers.
It also allows creation of new districts to capture increased taxes over time resulting from transportation improvements. The money would be used for projects ranging from expanding mass transit to building or improving highways.
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