For several years, many people, including members of Mississippi’s Transportation Commission, have been encouraging state lawmakers to significantly raise the fuel tax to pay for maintenance of highways, roads and bridges.
That encouragement has fallen on largely deaf ears in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which is loathe to raise any tax, no matter how sensible the increase would be.
In the summer of 2015, when gas prices were running about $2 a gallon, the time was opportune to raise a tax that had not been adjusted since 1987. Motorists would have hardly noticed, since prices at the pump were the lowest they had been in six years, and even longer if adjusted for inflation.
Now, the Legislature has squandered that opportunity. Gas prices are moving back upward, with the national average having risen about 40 cents a gallon in the past year. It is now edging closer to the $3 mark than the $2 level of three years ago.
The gas tax still needs to be raised — at least doubling the current 18.4 cents a gallon just to come close to catching up to inflation over the past 31 years. But lawmakers have made it politically harder by not doing something they should have done years ago.
