Newspaper Column: Taxing Gas to Fight Congestion

Abstract

Reston’s Senator Janet Howell has sponsored a bill calling for a referendum in Northern Virginia on a 5% sales tax on the price of gas, hiking the existing extra 2 cents to about 8 cents per gallon and dedicating the revenue to “highway and transit improvements” in the I-66, I-95 and Dulles corridors. The bill contains a provision requiring reduction of real estate or other local taxes in the amount by which these extra sales taxes replace funds allocated by local jurisdictions to rail and bus service.