Looking Under Colorado Seat Cushions for $142mm/year
by Rich Bratten | 6:24 pm, July 31, 2010 | Comments Off
The GAO has confirmed that we are WASTING $142,209,675 per year of our Colorado citizens’ money through the federal surface transportation program.
The GAO has identified Colorado as one of 27 “Donor” states that pay more in federal taxes and fees than they receive in federal-aid. No surprise there, since reports from ALEC show that Colorado gets $0.81 for every $1.00 we send to Washington.
The federal GAO published a report in March 2008 on ideas for restructuring the federal approach on surface transportation. One of the ideas outlined was to “Turn Back” surface transportation programs and revenues to the states. Appendix III of the GAO report details the implications of this idea.
Bottom line: Turning back the surface transportation programs and revenues to Colorado would allow Colorado to manage these programs itself, without federal interference or funding, without the additional layer of federal government redundancy, spending the same amount of money as is currently being spent on surface transportation today and we would actually need to charge $.0457 less per gallon in taxes than the federal government is charging.
The fed tax is $0.184 per gallon. We only receive back from the federal government $0.1383 per gallon through current federal funding for surface transportation. We could either deliver the same programs we have today and charge Colorado citizens $0.0457 less per gallon for gas, or we could keep the additional $0.0457 per gallon of gas and use appropriately (reduce “fees”, enhance road maintenance, etc.) within the state’s constitutional limits, if any, for revenue attribution, etc.
To give you an idea of how much money this is, I looked at the state’s revenue from motor fuel in 2006-2007. It was $684,598,000. Doing a back of the envelope calculation assuming all gasoline (simplifying here) that would indicate that 3,111,809,091 gallons of gas were taxed in that year. 3,111,809,091 gallons x $0.0457 = $142,209,675 per year.
I think the GAO has come up with a good idea – perhaps we should take them up on it? This would be an excellent step toward reducing the unconstitutional burden that the federal government places upon the citizens of Colorado.
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