Pennsylvania relies heavily on its gas tax for transportation funding- even if the policy becomes an easy target when prices at the pump rise.<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania has a 57.6\u00a2 gas tax- the second highest in the nation. It also has the fifth largest state-maintained road system in the country.<\/p>\n
Over 40,000 miles of state owned asphalt roll through hills and fields, all of them repaired by money from a gas tax.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople, if they are traveling across Pennsylvania, can see that right now. There\u2019s a lot of construction on our roads,\u201d said Rep. Kathy Rapp, a Republican for Warren, Forest, and Crawford Counties.<\/p>\n
The gas tax brought in $3.5 billion dollars to the motor license fund in the 2024\/25 fiscal year, according to numbers shared by a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the Pennsylvania constitution, the fuel tax can only be used for maintaining highway and bridge needs,\u201d said Jason Wagner, director of government affairs for the Association of Pennsylvania Constructors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By Kara Jeffers<\/p>\n
Around 5% of the gas tax ($250 million) does go to state police, though lawmakers have worked for a decade to remove them from the fund. Roughly 13% of the state gas tax also goes to local road construction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are county owned bridges, state owned bridges\u2013 there\u2019s a big formula,\u201d said Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, Republican chair of the House Transportation Committee.<\/p>\n
The isolated fund has lead to state lawmakers treating the gas tax as the primary source of funding for road and bridge work; compared to other states that use multiple funding sources for their transportation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe it\u2019s one of the most fair taxes we have. Because of that, if you drive more, you pay more. If you drive less, you pay less.<\/p>\n
While the tax can be easy to hate;<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have bills actually to suspend the gas tax for the summer. That would bring real affordability to those main travel months,\u201d said Rep. Clint Owlett, a Republican for Tioga and Bradford Counties, and part of House Republican Leadership. He noted suspension policies would need a plan to supplement the lost revenue.<\/p>\n
Rep. Ed Neilson, the Democratic chair of the House Transportation Committee, cautions that gas tax pauses lead to delayed and higher cost projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw it happen in Florida. The governor of Florida did it a few years back, and and he actually said, \u2018I\u2019ll never do that again\u2019,\u201d Neilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not charging any more than we have to in order to pay our bills,\u201d Benninghoff said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania relies heavily on its gas tax for transportation funding- even if the policy becomes an easy target…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2288,37,28,5929,30,29],"class_list":["post-234575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-bureau","tag-harrisburg","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-capitol","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}