"State lawmakers probably will have to put a tax or fee hike before the voters sometime over the next several years to address the state’s transportation-funding shortfall, state Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said in an interview with Political Notebook.

Schwartz, who will be up for re-election in 2010, said one avenue might be raising the state’s gas tax, which has remained the same since the early 1990s, when the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights came into effect and barred state lawmakers from periodically raising the levy."