AAA Enters Ore. Weight-Mile Tax Fray

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - The AAA of Oregon threatened to refer a proposed 5-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax hike to the voters because the package also eliminates Oregon's weight-mile tax on truckers.

The motorist group supports increasing the gas tax to pay money for road repairs, but said Monday that the weight-mile tax on truckers is the fairest way to compensate for their wear on the highways.

"Trucks cause significant damage to our roads and bridges," said AAA president Roger Graybeal. "Oregonians will not pay more for roads while trucks are allowed to pay less."

The group's threat to force a statewide vote came as Senate President Brady Adams announced the Senate would vote on a road repair plan that is scaled down from the 6-cent-a-gallon gas tax hike passed by the House.

Adams said the Senate plan would replace the current weight-mile tax with a tax on diesel fuel, a move sought by trucking industry lobbyists who say the weight mile tax is overly cumbersome and expensive to administer.

Adams said the gas tax package would be brought to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote.

"We will have one vote, and that is all," the Grants Pass Republican said. "Either there is support, or there isn't."

arshall Coba, a trucking industry lobbyist, praised Adams' announcement that the Senate's plan would include a switch to a tax on diesel fuel.

"The weight-mile tax has been an onerous burden on the trucking industry for 50 years," Coba said.

A squabble over the weight-mile tax was one of the factors that helped kill a similar gas tax package at the end of the 1997 Legislature.

House Speaker Lynn Snodgrass supports a gas tax hike but said Monday that the Senate's move to eliminate the weight-mile tax puts the plan's fate in doubt.

"I don't know what will happen on the House side," the

epublican lawmaker from Boring said. "We couldn't get a weight-mile repeal out of two committees here."