Deal to increase sales tax to build roads

There is an initiative floating around from some group called the “TIME Coalition”.

A shady backroom deal cooked up between Napolitano and the Arizona Home Builders is almost too much to bear. It seems the home builders have engineered a way to escape any extra taxation (impact fees) by helping out the governor with another of here proposals. More here: nototime.blogspot.com including an image of the leaked agreement

As a tactic to derail TIME’s proposition (should it make it to the ballot), no-new-taxes lawmakers are preparing their own legislative initiative. This would set up a situation where potentially there could be two similar but competing ballot propositions both dealing with “transportation”. Rep. Russell Pearce’s legislation would put a ballot proposition that would levy a 1/2 percent addition general state sales tax whose revenues would be used for building roads. This is meant to stick it in the eye of TIME’s proposition which spends some of its revenue on public transportation — but not very much, 78% is on roads and freeways and only around 20% is on public transit. Rival Transportation Plan Posed, Arizona Republic, May 30, 2008.

License Plate Covers

Apparently the existing law, §28-2354, which requires that vehicle license plates be displayed “clearly legibly” isn’t clear enough for police, who don’t seem to enforce that law.

Thus House Bill HB2250 (48th legislature, 2nd regular session, 2008) which would make the rules about covers crystal clear: “…a person shall not apply a covering or any substance to the license plate”.

Unfortunately, the provision is tangled up with the abortion debate — strange but true! It turns out the cover thing is in a bill involving special license plates… thus the controversy.

And as if one controversy wasn’t enough, the cover thing is clearly aimed at would-be camera violators.

By the way, probably the most controversial use of photo enforcement was speed cameras on a section of Loop 101 in Scottsdale. ASU engineering professor Simon Washington’s research has consistently showed only good things in terms of safety and even a time savings due to reduced speed — that is the time savings due to fewer crashes more than offset the time lost by lower speed. See Speed cameras help travel time, report says, Arizona Republic,May 13, 2008.

Unmentioned and unquantified in the report are not only fuel consumption, and air pollution benefits. Mean speeds were reduced from 73 before to 64 mph after enforcement. Vehicles’ toxic NOX pollution increases substantially with increased speed. NOX turns into ozone.

The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change

The full paper that was excerpted to become a WSJ op-ed piece can be downloaded from the Pacific Research website. (a good deal, as the cover price is $24.95!).

I should point out that the paper is not a scientific endeavor, and the author is not a scientist by training: “Hayward holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in Government from Claremont Graduate University”. It is more of an outlook and commentary. He tends to think the mass-media (MSM?) has a tendency to sensationalize environmental stories and make everything seem both excessively gloomy and unfairly blame anthropogenic causes — this is probably true. He lists some citations that refute that trend: Continue reading “The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change”

Gas Tax Pandering

It’s hard to know where to start with this one. John McCain at least openly acknowledges that economics isn’t his strong suit. Senator Kyl, I would have thought, would know better. Pure pandering.

Here we are in the midst of a big brown-cloud and ozone non-attainment season, and our two senators are endorsing a plan to increase the amount to gasoline and diesel consumed. Vehicle emissions in Maricopa county (the Phoenix metropolitan area) are the primary contributor to smog.

As if that’s not bad enough, the shortfall — the amount that would have been collected during the “holiday” — will be made up from general revenue. Which is to say, car use will be (further) subsidized by taxes unrelated to driving, like the income tax, or will simply make the federal deficit larger. This sets up exactly the wrong incentives– you will get more driving and less useful economic activity.

From a economic policy perspective, a much better stimulus would be to have some sort of “holiday” on payroll taxes. These taxes are a direct tax on labor, and hit lower-wage earners particularly hard.

“…John McCain proposed a ‘gas tax holiday’ that would suspend federal levies between Memorial Day and Labor Day… His Arizona colleague, Jon Kyl, promptly introduced it as Senate legislation”

“The 18.4 cent tax per gallon of gas (24.4 cents for diesel) funds interstate highway repairs and other transit needs, though general revenue would offset losses from the moratorium.”

— Global Warming Holiday, WSJ April 25, 2008. (emphasis added)

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DUI bill passes with help from speaker

UPDATE June 7, 2008:  HB2643 passed and signed. Score one for Napalitano. So the interlock stays at a year.

UPDATE April 30, 2008: The governor vetoed the bill, citing the interlock compromise as untenable. Liquor industy lobbyiests allowed House Speaker Jim Weiers to allow the bill to go forth because is contained the interlock reduction. There were perfectly good bills — being blocked — that would have given use perfectly sensible reform, e.g. the fix for conflicting penalties for extreme DUI.

In an unusual stroke of consistency, a bunch of competing DUI changes were rolled up and passed. Continue reading “DUI bill passes with help from speaker”

Ozone and CAFE

Coincidentally, two related-but-unrelated items came out today.

A new National Academy of Sciences report confirms (reconfirms?) the link between elevated ozone air pollution and increased risk of premature death was released. See, e.g. Panel Confirms That Ozone Kills, US News & World Report April 23, 2008. Ozone is an unavoidable byproduct any combustion, e.g. automobile use.

On the fuel-economy front, presumably to coincide with earth day, Bush Administration released accelerated CAFE standards. See e.g. Government to release proposed fuel economy rules, Associated Press April 22, 2008.

Holman Jenkins’ WSJ Business World column, A Volt out of the Red, gave his usual analysis of CAFE, which I believe is right, and I tend to agree with. My complain is his sin of omission — does he not know about toxic pollution? He continues to berate the Prius, as in this dig “…GM intends to beat Toyota at its own game of selling bogus green symbolism to Washington and Hollywood”.

Does toxic pollution not count? Since apparently Jenkins doesn’t “believe in” global warming, does that also mean he doesn’t believe in air pollution either?.

The Toyota Prius (note 1) puts out only about one-half the ozone-forming pollutants per mile of the average new car (average is defined as being bin 5). An absurd vehicle like the Hummer H2, bin 8, emits between two and ten TIMES as much ozone-forming pollutants (note 2). How much more are H2 drivers paying to pollute the air, say, compared to Prius driver? Nothing. Drivers pay nothing. And if you can believe it, the H2 situation now is much better than it was a few years ago, in 2004 model year the H2 emitted between five and 30 times the pollution of a Prius.

And it’s not like Toyota is “green” and Hummer (owned by GM) is dirty — Toyota produces their own dirty cars, e.g. in 2008 the Scion XD bin 8, just like the H2. Though it looks like Toyota never produces a bin 11 car.

What’s the point? I don’t own a Prius. The point isn’t for everyone to run out and buy a low-emissions vehicle — that actually wouldn’t work because the regulations work on a fleet average. A constructive start would be to price pollution appropriately. This simple market-based solution would reduce the total amounts of smog and result in better health for all. The polluter, that is to say the driver, should pay.

Notes:

1) See EPA GreenVehicle Guide, About Ratings. Pdfs for vehicle emissions standards, and summary/history (the glossary is particularly useful). This explains the Tier 1, and Tier 2 “bins”. This is all terribly confusing because the bin number (1 through 11) goes up as pollution goes up — whereas the EPA’s “Air Pollution Score” (10 downto 0) goes down.

2) Retrieved from the 2008 model year EPA Green Vehicle Guide.

-) Another explanation of Tiers and Bins at hybridcars.com

-) Excellent article at Edmunds: Untangling U.S. Vehicle Emissions Regulations

Who pays for ozone pollution?

If the WSJ (editors, of course. Red Tape Rising, March 21, 2008) is to be believed, the Bush administration has unleashed a last-minute flood of not only expensive but mis-guided regulations on America. Singled out for scrutiny is the modest reduction in allowable levels of man-made ozone pollution. Continue reading “Who pays for ozone pollution?”

AAA Report on cost of Automobile Crashes

How much of these costs are socialized? The report makes no attempt to quantify this, some of the stories correctly note that some of these costs filter through to many other things, such as health care/insurance.

Why doesn’t our press bother to cover this? The only localized story I could find was  KPNX-12 . Once again we have risen to near the top nationwide, sixth out of 85 not too shabby! This goes hand-in-hand with Arizona’s impressively high traffic fatality rate. Which is something else the press isn’t interested in.

…The report looked at 85 cities across the nation. Phoenix ranks sixth with the highest costs due to crashes. According to the study, it costs $1,368.00 extra per person in the Valley when there is a crash. The national average is $1,052.00 per person.

— Crashes Cost Everyone,  KPNX-12

Continue reading “AAA Report on cost of Automobile Crashes”