A LEADER: Arkansas is about to make itself a leader in electric car registration fees, at $200 each. Cuz, why not?

With no legislative meetings Friday, lawmakers will clear out for home tonight so there are no free lobby swillathons on the schedule tonight. But taxpayers will pay plenty during the day for their service with anticipated Senate consideration of a whopping tax increase for highways on the agenda.

Lawmakers can get a free lunch today from county clerks and assessors at the Capitol Hill Building.

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Senators will need fortification to swallow the governor’s regressive highway tax plan in the face of their frequent vows to reduce taxes — permanent half-cent sales tax on all sales, first-ever sales tax on motor fuel, a nation-leading registration fee for electric cars and a shell game diverting casino taxes that are a long way from being realized to highways. Gov. Hutchinson made the shell game clear in the Democrat-Gazette today. He’s salting away enough revenue every year to dole out as he deems necessary. Highways are already getting general revenue through this executive sleight-of-hand. Other services are, as a result, being starved.

Magic will be necessary to achieve the $35 million highway infusion from the casino tax. The casino expansion amendment cut the state tax rate — which had all gone to general state services — by $32 million a year. State services will be limited by Asa’s highway bill to $31 million a year from casinos forever where they had been getting $63 million. Any additional revenue will go to highways. Forever. But it will be years, maybe eight or nine, before casino tax revenue reaches $66 million, the amount necessary to provide $31 million to state services and $35 million for highways. Where will it come from: Squirreled-away general revenues is the apparent plan. Again, that means diverting money from schools, public safety, health care and other state services.

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A word of self-interest: My wife just bought an electric car. The state wants to tax it heavily to make up for money not paid in fuel taxes (though there ARE add-ons for taxes on electric purchases). Fine, even though these and all cars do negligible damage to interstates, unlike the big trucks that pound the roads to rubble without paying their share for the destruction. But to put a fee — $200 a year — near the highest in the country (matching Georgia and West Virginia in the state map I found)? 

This is an ideological statement and a statement about Arkansas generally. We have to be dragged kicking and screaming to change, be it in science, education, culture or politics. If filling the air with carbon was good enough for great-grandpap, it’s good enough for us, by damn. Anybody who thinks otherwise will be fined, ostracized, discriminated against or otherwise marginalized. It is the Arkansas way. This kind of thinking (and not the income tax rate) is why we rank so near the bottom in so many indicators.

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But cheer up, we’re about to lead the country in resistance to green vehicles.

We also are ahead of the curve, by the way, in the size of our state highway system. Is it a  good idea for the state to maintain so many secondary roads? Nobody would dream of studying THAT or studying a way to make truckers pay a realistic fee for their damage before asking taxpayers to fork over $300 million a year to the construction industry.

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Thanks, by the way, to Sen. Jon Dismang for raising the piercing — and poorly answered question — of where Asa intends to get the money for the certain shortfall in casino tax revenue the next few years. He’s a lonely opponent. The bill in the Senate has 22 sponsors among 35 members.

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