With gas prices soaring because of the war in Ukraine … some say it’s time to give people a break when they fill up in New Jersey.
State Senator Shirley Turner said she would introduce a bill to lower the state gas tax from 42 cents to 14 cents for 60 days.
But Greg Lalevee, who is on the board of the state’s transportation trust fund, sayid that might solve one problem but cause another.
“There’s $970 billion in transportation trust fund bonds for which the gas tax is the revenue source to pay those bonds off,” he said.
Lalevee said the tax is also going toward paying off trust fund bonds.
“If we cut the funding source to pay back nearly a billion dollars in bonds, it seems as if all the work to improve the credit rating would just fly out the window,” he said.
Moody’s raised New Jersey’s credit rating on March 2. It was the first time the state’s credit rating had been boosted since 2005.
The gas tax, Lalevee said, also pays for needed transportation projects.
“There’s no plan to my knowledge on how we would continue to fund the current projects that are reliant on the transportation trust fund for their funding,” he said.
State Senator Ed Durr has a different idea for giving people a break on gas — he introduced a bill this month to give some families a $500 gas tax credit.