…for now, anyway. Backers are vowing to revive it.
The initiative was thrown out by the Secretary of State because of technical errors in some petitions, but mostly because of a huge number of invalid signatures. Backers lost all appeals, so for this election cycle it is definitely dead.
Bob Robb’s column was, I thought, astute. “the demise of the transportation sales tax initiative is a very good thing. This was a monumentally bad transportation finance plan.” He mentions, but in my estimation goes too easy on, Napolitano’s role — the smarmy deal between her and the home builders will be a stain on her legacy.
John Semmens, whom I often disagree with ideologically, but his instincts here are right on. In an op-ed Aug 30, 2008 in the Arizona Republic Traffic plan’s demise is ‘disaster averted’, emphasis added (more from John on TIME here):
The sales tax is an inappropriate funding mechanism. Resort to this non-user tax aggravates the traffic congestion the spending is supposed to alleviate. Transportation facilites should be paid for by the users. This is the link that will prompt more efficient and equitable investment”.
Sometimes Semmens gets it wrong, like in an op-ed published in the Dallas Morning News in January 2008, Fuel hikes won’t spur public transit, his premise that people won’t change their automotive behavior, with the benefit of 7 months of continued high fuel prices, demonstrably wrong. He wrote (7 months ago) that: “Indeed, the dramatic rise in gasoline prices over the past several years seems to have had almost no impact on U.S. driving habits… The National Automobile Dealers Association, for example, reports that sales of larger vehicles are still robust”. We now know 2007 miles driven have actually gone down, not a huge amount but still there you have it. And sales of larger vehicles, we now know, are officially in the toilet — the very future of GM and Ford, who foolishly gambled on continuing “larger vehicle” sales (especially truck-based SUVs and other light trucks sold as passenger vehicles), is in doubt because of it. Their stock prices are at multi-decade lows (50 year?). The 2008 August sales figures (these are reported as compared to August 2007 sales) came out on Sept 3 (e.g. bloomberg news) — e.g. Ford’s sales overall were down 27% overall, but its SUV segment were down 53%. Truck sales (which are, of course, larger, heavier, and less fuel efficient) are down far more than car sales. The subcompact Focus is up 23%.
People need not just higher fuel prices to change their behavior, they need some assurance that the price will remain high. Without something like an artificial price hike (i.e. a large fuel tax), only the passage of time will convince people prices, either high or low, are going to remain.
more background on the TIME initiative.