Alliance Joins Statewide Coalition Opposing Gas Tax Suspension
The Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance along with 56 other business, civic, and government organizations has issued a statement in opposition to suspending Virginia’s gasoline tax and placing a 2% cap on the annual indexing for inflation.
Virginia’s current gasoline tax suspension proposal would reduce state transportation revenue by more than $400 million, while only saving the average Virginia driver less than 50 cents per day.
The gasoline tax is one of the top three dedicated sources of Virginia transportation funding. This user fee is directly reinvested into maintaining and improving our multimodal transportation system including roadways, bridges, ports, airports, rail, transit, bike, pedestrian, and transportation technology infrastructure.
Virginia’s willingness over the last decade to invest in transportation has been critical to our quality of life, economic success, and prosperity. The revenue lost from suspending the gasoline tax significantly exceeds the amount of new federal infrastructure revenue that Virginia’s transportation fund is expected to receive in FY2023.
And due to the lack of transparency and market fluctuations of gasoline prices, there is no way to guarantee that gasoline tax savings will be passed on to Virginia consumers.
Virginia citizens rely on our transportation network daily for access to jobs, opportunities, healthcare, recreation, and more. We urge Governor Youngkin and the Virginia General Assembly to instead focus on transparent, effective ways to reduce the everyday costs of ordinary Virginians rather than causing long-term harm to our transportation system.