Legislation to raise more than $300 million a year for highways funding appears dead in the West Virginia House Finance Committee, after Chairman Eric Nelson, R-Kanawha, announced Tuesday that "the support isn't there to move forward."
Nelson later said he removed the bill from the committee agenda Tuesday morning, after concluding that there was not enough support to pass any of the four funding components in the bill (SB 555).
"The 1 percent sales tax [increase] did not have bipartisan support, nor did increasing the privilege tax, nor the variable component of the gas tax," he said.
Nelson said committee members also were reluctant to increase Division of Motor Vehicles fees to raise about $66 million a year, recalling that, in 2011, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin - up for re-election - vetoed a similar set of DMV fee increases.
"Everyone remembered that," Nelson said.
Originally, the bill simply imposed a 3-cent-a-gallon increase in the state gas tax in years when gas prices are below $2 a gallon - intended to help offset a provision in existing law that automatically adjusts the wholesale portion of the gas tax downward in years when gasoline is cheap.
In the past two years, those adjustments have cost the state Road Fund $40 million a year, Nelson noted, and the 3-cent tax would have recovered about $33 million of that loss.
However, the Senate amended the bill to provide about $315 million a year for highways funding, primarily by raising the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent, with the more than $200 million in new revenue dedicated to the Road Fund.
"We are at a crisis in West Virginia, as it relates to our roads," Sen. Robert Plymale, D-Wayne, said in offering the amendment. "Constituents have been telling me for three, four or five years, 'Do something to fix them,' and they're willing to pay more for it."
Nelson said committee members agree that there are serious issues with the maintenance of roads that must be addressed.
"We want to do whatever we can to fix these roads," he said, saying committee members found the multiple tax increases included in SB 555 overwhelming.
"That's just an awful lot for many of our members to look at, right at the last week of the session," he said.
Meanwhile, Mike Clowser, executive director of the Contractors Association of West Virginia, said Tuesday that he's not giving up hope for road funding this session.
"I think legislators realize they've got to fix the roads and they've got to create jobs and they've got to improve safety, and they've got to create economic development," Clowser said.
"If they leave here with nothing, they're going to have to answer to constituents, when there was a plan supported by 62 percent of West Virginians to fix their roads," he added, referring to a survey, conducted for West Virginians for Better Roads, showing support for the funding proposals in SB 555.
He said advocates of the Senate bill were approached Monday evening with a proposal to split the 1 percent sales tax increase between the Road Fund and to fund Public Employees Insurance Agency premiums.
"We realize the situation the budget is in, and we certainly understand the situation PEIA is in," Clowser said, referring to serious revenue deficits in the 2016-17 state budget.
Reach Phil Kabler at philk@wvgazettemail.com, 304 348-1220 or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.