Paging Americans for Prosperity

Maybe you can explain to me how raising vehicle registration fees by a flat amount for everyone is less regressive than a tax on restaurant meals?

Other revenue-raisers the study panel favors including raising the state's vehicle-registration fees in $10 increments in each of the next three years. The move, it said, could raise about $190 million a year.

Members also want the General Assembly to look into charging higher registration fees for the use of heavier vehicles, a practice officials in Florida already use.

Yet another possibility, one urged by state Sen. Richard Stevens, R-Wake, is charging a higher per-gallon fuel tax for diesel than for the use of gasoline. The move would target the trucking industry.

Members favor giving local governments power to levy 1 percent local-option sales-tax surcharges for road or transit work, with voter approval.

The group's most esoteric proposal calls for further study of a "vehicle miles traveled" fee that would collect a penny from motorists for every two or four miles they drive. Officials would collect mileage reports when vehicles come due for inspection.

Members are interested because they expect high fuel prices, federal fuel-efficiency mandates and the growing popularity of alternate fuels and hybrid-drive vehicles to erode collections of the existing gas tax over time.

Actually, i expect everyone and her brother to oppose these new "revenue enhancements." For myself, let's see more of that money going to finance transportation options that don't involve more and bigger roads, and i'll get right n that bandwagon.