Gov. Bill Ritter was the featured guest on 850 KOA's Mike Rosen show Monday morning, and his statements about a proposed $100 increase to vehicle registration fees deserve a second listen.
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The Governor's "blue ribbon panel" on transportation, officially known as the Transportation Finance and Implementation Panel, recently delivered its findings to the legislature. Tasked with identifying a plan for maintaining the state's roads infrastructure, the panel not surprisingly came back with a $2 billion wish-list of new spending. To cover the projects, panelists proposed five options for raising revenue from drivers, including a new "maintenance fee" to raise $500 million annually from vehicle registrations.
In responding to caller questions about the fee hike (audio), which would not require voter approval, Ritter was quick to say the proposal was that of the Department of Transportation, and not his own. "We're just out there talking about it," he said.
That's a convenient distinction for Ritter to make, given that Ritter himself established the panel and appointed all of its 32 members. Unlike the state's commission on healthcare, which delivered its recommendations last week, the transportation panel was established through an executive order, not by statute. While the state transportation commissioner served on the panel, its contents represent the majority opinion of Ritter's appointees.
A link to a press release announcing the panel's report on the Governor's web site identifies the group as "Gov. Ritter's Transportation Panel."
Money for infrastructure, or to save the environment?
Ritter also stated he is open to a variety of options for how the new "maintenance fee" would be calculated, including the possibility of a vehicle's emissions levels being taken into account. Political memories can be short, but he may want to look back to last June, when Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, backtracked from the city's ill-received "Climate Action Plan." The most controversial aspects of Denver's plan to fight global warming included insurance surcharges for those whose energy usage of vehicle miles driven are deemed to be "excessive."
Hickenlooper quickly backed off the plan, telling the Denver Post's David Harsanyi, "We're in a discussion phase right now, not [the] policymaking stage."
Ritter's suggestion the fee increase may be calculated using a factor unrelated to road wear, namely emissions, strays from the intent of his own panel to find solutions to an admittedly flawed transportation-funding scheme. In trying to sound open-minded and non-committal, the Governor is creating confusion as to what exactly he's trying to accomplish in taking more of driver's money every year at registration time.