One Brick Short

Beware, my fellow Fringies, for Big Brother is watching you!

First, it was your property for taxes. Then it was your income for taxes. Soon, you won’t be able to fill up at the gas pump without paying for each and every mile you’ve driven on the state’s roads.

Sure, I’m paranoid, but they are out to get me. Consider Oregon where a task force is debating whether to attach to every new vehicle sold in that state a Global Positioning System to record every mile driven and where. This comes courtesy of the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, so it must be true.

“This is a way to try to develop a fair funding mechanism that we’re going to have to have if we’re going to be aggressive in terms of looking at electric cars and hybrids and plug-ins and all those options, and at the same time continue to invest in our roads and infrastructure,“ said Rem Nivens, the Oregon governor’s deputy communications director.

It seems that fuel-efficient vehicles are also gas tax efficient. The more electronic cars out there, the fewer gas-tax dollars that come into the state coffers and the less road improvements that can be made, even though the same wear-and-tear is happening. So, if you drive a Prius, you’re paying fewer taxes. My Corolla is paying a lot less in gas tax than, say, my old Mazda van, even though they get about the same usage.

And it ain’t just a Granola Coast thing, either. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Florida, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Texas, are reportedly looking into a per mile fee for drivers.

Some Oregonians say the plan discriminates against rural residents who may have to drive several miles just to get to the grocery store. Well, let them move to town!

Some say it will create potential inequities compared with drivers from out of state. Some raise privacy concerns, with Big Brother keeping a satellite watch over where everyone is driving. The govmint says p-shaw and shut up, if you know what’s good for you. We know where you live!

So how much would they charge? In a Portland trial program in 2006 and 2007, about 300 cars were equipped with GPS devices and every time drivers bought gas, they were charged 1.2 cents a mile—about equivalent to the state’s 24-cents-a-gallon tax assuming a vehicle that averages 20 miles per gallon.

“They drive up to the pump and there’s a mileage reader there, very much like a modern toll reader, which identifies the car as a mileage fee payer, and the total mileage driven in each zone is transferred by a wireless radio frequency that goes into a database, and the mileage fee rates are applied,“ said a govmint spokesman.

Jason Williams, executive director of the Taxpayer Assn. of Oregon, said: “This is just another wide-eyed government experiment that’s going to fail and cost the taxpayer a lot of money. We basically see it as the next big boondoggle of 2009.“

Dont’ bet on it. It’s all about raising money, after all, and if writing tickets and charging money for gas won’t do it, the govmint will find a way. The GPS mileage-counters could be programmed to not regularly report a vehicle’s location, if the govmint wanted to. Still, they can know what you’re doing and where you’re going and HOW FAST you’re doing it.

Hey, the idea of GPS ticketing has been bounced around in Europe for years. Govmint computers simply monitor your GPS and automatically issue you a citation when you exceed the speed limit on those remote stretches of road. 

Of course, state officials say they are committed to minimizing concerns about privacy and about inequity before implementing any mileage-based idea. Of course, they’d always say that. Then they point out that the monitors could also allow the state to charge higher fees for rush-hour travel in congested areas, In fact, Seattle conducted such a trial with GPS and found that drivers were much less likely to enter congested areas when charged to do so.

The GPS devices would be installed only in new vehicles, and would monitor mileage only on Oregon roads. Drivers from outside the state would pay the standard gas tax.

Mileage fees could be charged by forcing folks to submit odometer readings—when renewing car registration, for example—or setting an estimated average that everyone would pay. If your car has a broken odometer, you’d need to get it fixed, of course. And drivers would need to prove they drove less and car sellers could be charged if their odometer readings were higher than they should be.

Oregon’s govmint believes it will need help from the feds and other surrounding states because of costs for the GPS and the likelihood that some Oregonians would just go out of state to buy cars without the GPS.

When it comes to your money, the govmint is always thinking.