Governor Terry Branstad will not ask state legislators to raise the gasoline tax in 2012, he confirmed yesterday. The comments will disappoint road-builders and members of a transportation commission the governor appointed earlier this year.

Rod Boshart reported on Branstad’s comments yesterday:

“I think with the financial circumstances that many people are in today rather than being the first thing you do is raise the fuel tax, I think we’ve got to look at additional efficiencies,” Branstad said during a radio call-in show just a few hours after receiving a citizen advisory panel’s recommendations that included raising the gas tax by 8 to 10 cents a gallon and increasing the state’s new vehicle registration fee from 5 percent to 6 percent.

The governor said he has challenged Paul Trombino III, the director of the state Department of Transportation (DOT), to eliminate duplications, find efficiencies and identify administrative savings that would be the equivalent of 2 cents of fuel tax, or about $50 million. He also wants to end the diversion of a penny worth of gas tax revenue from the state road use tax fund to deal with leaky underground storage tanks – saying much of the tank problem has been addressed and he is concerned the money is becoming “a slush fund” that legislators are using for purposes not road related.

“I think we need to look at that first before turning to these other alternatives,” Branstad said before and during his WHO-AM radio call-in show. “These are some of the things that we can do up front before we ever look at raising the fuel tax.”

The governor’s Transportation 2020 Citizen Advisory Commission voted provisionally last month to recommend a gas tax hike and other steps to increase funding for road and bridge work. Branstad had indicated earlier this year that he was open to raising that tax, which hasn’t been increased in Iowa since 1989. Some conservative interest groups, including the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, quickly endorsed the commission’s recommendations, but Branstad sounded reluctant to support a tax increase.

It never seemed likely that the Republican-controlled Iowa House and Democratic-controlled Senate would agree to raise the gas tax during an election year following redistricting. Both candidates in the recent Iowa Senate district 18 special election spoke out against raising that tax. Maybe Branstad wasn’t sold on the need for a tax hike, or maybe he simply recognized that this cause wouldn’t be a wise use of his own political capital.

Branstad has repeatedly said reducing commercial property taxes and passing major education reforms should be priorities during the next legislative session.

Incidentally, I do not think the governor was correct when he told radio listeners yesterday that Iowa has mostly solved problems with leaky underground storage tanks. I am seeking further information about that issue and will update this post when I have more details.

UPDATE: I have been making inquiries about the the one penny per gallon Environmental Protection Charge, a user fee created in order to protect groundwater from underground tanks. Most of the leaky tanks held gasoline or diesel.

Branstad is correct to say that for many years, legislators have allocated those funds to other projects, as opposed to the intended purpose.

However, he is not right to imply that significant funds are no longer needed to address leaking tanks. Many problematic underground storage tanks have been cleaned up, but the ones that moved through the system tended to be the easy fixes. So, a lot of leaky storage tanks in Iowa have been dealt with, while others have been identified as posing a low risk. That leaves some large sites that need major and/or ongoing remediation work to prevent pollutants from contaminating drinking water.