ROAD FUNDS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19523, 24 June 1933, Page 14

ROAD FUNDS

WAR AGAINST DIVISION. A battle royal Is raging In the State of California over repeated attempts to “raid” the road fund. So far the motorists and their supporters have won the day, but no sooner does the fight appear ended than up again it comes in the form of proposals in the Legislature and once again all go to it, hammer and tongs. It is interesting, in view of the fact that the population of California is a motoring population, ownership of cars being there heavier than in any other portion of the world’s surface, and roading having been pursued steadily and vigorously on systematic lines for quite a number of years since the advent of motor spirit taxation.

In a plain spoken statement, commenting on the division issue, Senator Breed, a strong advocate for the defence, says:— “The gasoline tax is the keynote of our ‘pay as you go’ plan of building and maintaining highways. The tax is paid by motorists as a special tax for a special purpose, and they have paid it gladly, despite the fact that motorists are more heavily taxed than any other class of taxpayers. Division of the tax to purposes not now specified by law would threaten complete breakdown of the highway financing plan which has resulted in vast economic advantages to California. That would be too heavy a price to pay. Those who are urging use of the gasoline tax to balance the State budget are not meeting the problem fairly and squarely. They are asking the Legislature to betray an explicit pledge, given the motorists of California when the gasoline tax laws were enacted. The Legislature is being asked through these diversion proposals to solve the budget problem in a way that would be a discredit to our State Government.”

Labour, officially, supports the motor party. Here is what Mr. Paul Scharrenberg, secretary of the State Federation of Labour, has to say:—

“Aside from the other vital questions of public policy and fair play to the motoring public who pay the gasoline tax, the fact cannot be ignored that immediate proposals for diversion of the tax would at once remove approximately 15,000,000 dollars from use for employment on road work. Ninety cents of each dollar expended on highway work goes to labour, according to State Deparmtnet of Works estimates. With the prevailing acute unemployment situation, it would be little less than a calamity to curtail this form of public work. That will be the result if the highway fund is depleted by diversion of the gas tax. For this and many other reasons, dipping into the gasoline tax for millions of dollars to balance the budget would be a cowardly course. It would mean weakly following the lines of least resistance instead of courageously and frankly meeting the problem raised by the present condition of State Government finances.”