I sincerely hope Tennessee passes Governor Haslam's proposal to raise the gas tax and index it to inflation. It is sorely needed.
Indexing was amended out of the bill. That was a non-starter in the House. There were tons of parlor games and parliamentary tricks played to get the bill passed. The original bill in Transportation sub committee was amended to not be a gas tax increase. The bill was amended to the "Hawk" plan. His original plan was use the budget surplus to fund road projects. This was done to get the votes to pass to the full standing committee. Once there is was amended back to the gas tax increase.
When the bill made it to the Finance Sub it looked like was going to be amended back to the "Hawk Plan." However, Rep Hawk said that we would have the votes in full Finance to get the gas tax increase off and a "Hawk-Harwell" plan which would use some of the surplus funds plus it would divert sales tax on vehicle sales into the Transportation fund. After much fanfare the amendment that carried this plan was actually withdrawn by Rep. Hawk himself.
When the bill hit the House floor there were 80 amendments, highly unusual for TN. The third and fourth actually made the bill. The remaining were all attempts to amend the bill with some to strip out the gas tax. In the end the other amendments failed.
The companion Senate bill had much smoother sailing as there was wide spread support for the gas tax in the Senate. In TN companion bills on the same subject are introduced and they travel their respective courses in each body. Since the House bill passed first the Senate substituted their bill on the Senate floor but they put an amendment on it which made it different from the House version. They put and elderly and disabled veterans property tax relief section on the bill. It went back to the House and the House accepted the Senate version.
Parlor tricks passed this gas tax. I was highly disappointed with this one. My Senator was one of the few Senators that voted against the bill.
The bill reaches across many subjects which nearly violates the TN Constitution as there is a clause in our Constitution that states that the caption of the bill must pertain to a subject. Since the other subjects related to taxes and the budget this is technically not a violation. The point was made that one tax increase needs a tax decrease in order for the bill to be considered a tax decrease to the "average Tennessean." The food tax was decreased by one point. The Hall tax was decreased by half a point and the F&E tax structure was changed so that high level manufactures are not "over" assessed taxes.