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Here we go again: New study backs up Allred on road costs
July 27, 2010
Contact: Shea Andersen
208.720.9904m
shea@allredforidaho.com
The results of the cost allocation study made public today confirm what Keith Allred has been arguing for two years: Car and pickup truck drivers have been subsidizing the heavy trucking industry.
The study, conducted by the Battelle Group for a state transportation study group, declared that while drivers of cars and light trucks are overpaying relative to their damage on Idaho roads, heavy trucks are actually underpaying. The results amplify previous studies that came to similar conclusions in previous years.
"As several earlier studies had already indicated, heavy trucks don’t pay their fair share of wear and tear on our roads," Keith Allred said. "That is why, as president of The Common Interest, I led the opposition to Otter’s deeply misguided proposal to more than double registration fees for cars and pickup trucks while raising registration fees on heavy trucks by only 5 percent."
"This issue highlights the difference between the way I will govern and the way Otter has governed," Allred said. "I will work for the interests of everyday Idahoans in spite of the powerful pressure exerted by special interests. Butch Otter puts the special interests who have contributed to his campaigns ahead of the interests of everyday Idahoans."
"Of course, there are two stories here. The first is that Otter serves special interests at the cost of everyday Idahoans," Allred said. "The second is that Otter was wrong to try to raise taxes on Idaho families during the worst economic downturn of our lifetimes."
“Raising the gas tax is wrong
for three
reasons. First, this is no time to be raising
taxes on Idaho families. Second, we have other far more pressing
priorities than roads right now, our kids’ education chief among
them. Third, raising the gas tax does nothing to correct the unfairness
of car and pickup owners paying for heavy trucks’ wear and tear.”
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Keith Allred
Otter
governor
taxes
