Congressmen Back LaHood in Dispute Over VMT Comment

This story appears in the March 2 print edition of Transport Topics.

ARLINGTON, Va. — Congressional leaders from both parties last week defended Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood after a spokesman for President Obama rebuffed LaHood’s suggestion that the government might use a vehicle miles-traveled tax to finance highways.

The Democratic chairman and ranking Republican on the House transportation committee as well as the chairman of the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee all said that the White House rebuke of LaHood, an Illinois Republican, was unfair and that VMT should be considered as a serious alternative to fuel taxes.

The issue concerning VMT flared up Feb. 20 after a LaHood interview with The Associated Press in which the former congressman, who served 14 years in the House from 1995 to Jan. 3, said the government “should look” at a tax on the number of miles that vehicles travel.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, asked if Obama had weighed in on the concept, said the president had not done so but that VMT “is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

On Feb. 26, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission released a report recommending moving to a VMT charge within a decade because the fuel tax is “likely to erode more quickly than previously thought.”

The commission, the second congressionally

mandated panel to examine highway financing, also endorsed a 10-cent increase in the gasoline tax and a 15-cent increase in the diesel tax as a way to fund roads and bridges in the interim.

Speaking to state highway officials here Feb. 23, Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House transportation committee, urged the transportation community to “stand up for our new secretary of transportation.”

Oberstar said LaHood “had the temerity to think as secretary, to think about how we’re going to finance the future of surface transportation. And what did he get? Slapped down.”

Oberstar said he had “news” for Gibbs: “Transportation policy is not going to be written in the press room of the White House. We’re going to write it on the Hill, and he’s not going to have anything to say about it.”

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the transportation panel, said that LaHood “didn’t have a good week.”

Mica said he and LaHood had discussed the concept of moving to a VMT over the long term before his confirmation in January, but “he made the mistake of saying it.”

“I don’t know the press secretary for the president, but he shouldn’t have jumped on his case that way,” Mica said.

Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Department of Transportation, criticized both the White House and LaHood for closing off too many transportation financing options.

“We will need a variety of techniques in order to fill that gap,” Olver said. “The administration has indicated it is not interested in raising the gas tax, and the new secretary was not given good marks for his comments on the use of a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, both of which are things I think we really have to think about. What’s left?”

Relying on “more tolling and public-private partnerships and whatever else you can come up with” turns the issue of funding roads and bridges into “a daunting sort of a thing,” Olver said.

Mica said that he was “shocked” the White House attacked LaHood over the idea because “actually, he’s quite correct that, eventually, that’s what we’ll have to go to.”

Oberstar said he’s been publicly talking about the VMT “for the past year and a half,” since the launch of a vehicle-mileage pilot project in Oregon.

“What I’ve been saying all along is that we have to consider the impact on the road surface . . . not just the amount of gas they buy,” Oberstar said. VMT is “one of many financing options that we look at and evaluate. Conceptually, it would make eminent good sense.”

Olver told reporters that, “eventually, the gasoline tax is going to dwindle” as cars become more efficient and motorists drive less.

“We’ve got to find other mechanisms than the gasoline tax over the long haul, there’s no question, [and] it certainly warrants being talked about. It’s being tried; there are pilot programs along those lines,” Olver said.

He added that he supported “whatever it is that’s possible, to get the kind of transportation system we need. I’m not ideologically committed to any one thing.”