Slide in gas tax revenue hits roads
By Ben Wear
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Gas tax revenues, the foundation of financing for Texas highways, are falling.
Revenue from Texas' 20-cent-a-gallon gas tax for the first eight months of the state's current budget year (which started in September) was 3.2 percent lower than in the same eight months a year earlier. And receipts reported in April, which were for gas purchased in February, were 8 percent lower than in February 2008.
"You have a trend line that is very disturbing," said Ned Holmes, a Texas Transportation Commission member from Houston. "There is no way we can fund the needs we have with this formula."
That formula, as Holmes and a half-dozen state senators described it in a Wednesday morning news conference, is the combination of a gas tax frozen at its current rate for 18 years, diversions of gas tax revenue to other state needs and an increasing debt load.
Also contributing to the slump is the fact that Americans have begun to drive less, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics based on surveys of thousands of locations.
The federal agency estimates that driving nationwide fell 3.6 percent in 2008. Miles driven in Texas fell for every month in 2008 with the exception of December, when gas prices had plunged to about $1.50 a gallon from highs near $4 just a few months earlier.
And combined with some motorists moving toward more fuel-efficient cars, fuel tax revenues are being driven down.
Total revenue from the state gas tax in the 2008 budget year was $3.1 billion. A 3.2 percent drop would be about $100 million. The Texas Department of Transportation gets about 72 percent of gas tax revenue — the rest goes to public education and administrative costs — so a 3.2 percent drop would cost the agency more than $70 million.
This would be the first drop in Texas motor fuels receipts since 1991, the same year that the Legislature raised the gas tax from 15 cents a gallon to 20 cents a gallon.
In the past 10 years, the increase has generally been about 2 to 3 percent: In 1999, gas tax revenue jumped 3.5 percent; in 2000, 3.7 percent; in 2001, 2.9 percent; in 2002, 2.5 percent; in 2003, 0.2 percent; in 2004, 2.8 percent; in 2005, 0.6 percent; in 2006, 2 percent; in 2007, 2 percent; and in 2008, 1.6 percent.
Those increases, however, have not been nearly enough to keep up with the growth in highway costs, which spiked at double-digit increases during each of the past several years.
With the economic slump, highway officials say the costs have leveled off.
TxDOT has been predicting for years that the improvement in average fuel efficiency of cars and trucks would eventually overrun population and driving increases, and send gas tax revenue down.
That, along with the slumping economy and the erratic gas prices, for this year at least, has made that prediction come true.
