Corzine Looks At Gas Tax Increase To Fund Infrastructure

Gov. Corzine notes that increasing the gas tax would be a last resort to fund infrastructure and capital improvements. The whole purpose of the tax on motor fuels in New Jersey is to fund the transportation trust fund, and it has barely managed to hold the line. New Jersey is one of the most densely built states in terms of its infrastructure, and much of it is in fair to poor shape.

New Jersey currently has the third lowest gas tax in the nation, and increasing it at a time when prices of gas are skyrocketing isn't likely to go over well with commuters who are often shell shocked after paying to fill up their tanks.

New Jersey often benefits from New York drivers who cross in to New Jersey to pay for cheaper gas - a practice often done in Rockland County where drivers would cross into Mahwah to pay for significantly cheaper gas.

Now, this comes less than a week after the state adopted the new budget, and Corzine is complaining that the state doesn't have enough money for the infrastructure portion of the budget?

This shows a fundamental dishonesty emanating from Trenton. They cannot be trusted to be fiscally responsible with taxpayer money, so they resort to pushing a budget that is bloated while claiming that the budget actually is smaller than last year as everyone from the Governor on down to the media ignore the $3.9 billion bonding scheme that actually increases the budget by $3.2 billion. Far from cutting the budget year over year, this is a massive increase and none of that goes to the state's transportation budget.

Further, Corzine is trying to use the Minnesota bridge collapse to garner support for a tax increase despite the fact that the bridge collapse was due not to a lack of maintenance, but because of design defects from when the bridge was built in the 1950s - a lack of redundancy and changes to the bridge's structure in the years since that added weight that the structure was unable to handle.