According to a resent report by the Heritage Foundation about the inequities of gas tax spending to states, Oklahoma sends more gas taxes into Washington then Oklahoma receives back to apply to our falling road structures.
I suggest that our legislators take action and stop allowing Oklahoma to keep sending money to Washington. Let our state keep the money and let us spend it and control it. Although I have a lack of confidence in our state legislators, there is even a greater lack of confidence in the way Washington is spending our money. (Roadman)
(Heritage Foundation – May 6 2009) Among the many contentious issues that Congress will confront in the lead up to the 2009 reauthorization of the federal highway program are the inherent inequities in how the program distributes trust fund revenues among the states. Under current law, the federal fuel taxes paid into the trust fund by motorists and truckers are returned to the states according to a series of mathematical formulas that attempt to match payments from the federal highway programs to the scope and usage of each state’s surface transportation system.[1]
Because of flaws in these distribution formulas, many states (donors) consistently receive shares that are less than they pay in gas taxes, while other states (donees) consistently receive more. This deficiency, in turn, exacerbates regional transportation problems because the shortchanged donor states typically are those with above-average population growth, which creates greater transportation needs, while the donee states often have slower-growing populations. While Congress has made some halfhearted efforts to mitigate this problem, it has made little real progress, and the depletion of the trust fund in 2008 will exacerbate these inequities and reverse what little progress has been made. READ MORE
