Georgia Senate scales back transportation funding bill
The Georgia Senate Friday narrowly passed a watered down transportation funding bill that would raise substantially less revenue for transportation projects than legislation passed by the state House of Representatives.
The Senate version of the bill, which passed 29-25, would replace Georgia’s sales tax on gasoline with an excise tax of 24 cents per gallon. The House bill would set the excise tax at 29.2 cents a gallon.
Senators also amended the bill on the floor to do away with a proposed highway user fee of $25 a year on every car registered in Georgia, $50 annually on trucks and $10 a year on motorcycles. Opponents said the fee, which had been added to the bill by the Senate Transportation Committee to compensate for the lower excise tax, was too reminiscent of the "birthday" tax on motor vehicles that the legislature abolished several years ago.
Senators who supported scaling back the bill argued the House version poses too big a tax increase.
“Georgians are taxed enough,” said Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell. “We can solve this problem without burdening them further.”
Like the House bill, the Senate version still would impose a registration fee on non-commercial electric vehicles of $200 a year and $300 a year on commercial EVs. Albers made an unsuccessful bid on the Senate floor to reduce those annual fees to $95 on non-commercial EVs and $195 on the commercial version of the vehicles.
The Senate bill also includes a $5 daily fee on rental cars that was not proposed by the House.
Both chambers' versions of the bill would eliminate the state’s $5,000 tax credit on leases and purchases of electric vehicles and jettison a state sales tax exemption on jet fuel that goes primarily to Delta Air Lines Inc.
The Senate’s Republican majority also rejected amendments proposed by Democrats aimed at encouraging the Georgia Department of Transportation to award more contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses.
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