Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
In new mexico back around 2006 this was one of the few states to charge nearly $4 a gallon for gasoline.
The governor said the tax increase was necessary to "fix the roads". Well the roads didn't get fixed at all, they got worse. I don't know what they did with the money but it definitely wasn't spent on the roads. The state deficit was also exploded to a billion dollars during that time.
Roads didn't start systematically being fixed until about 2011.
So I say fight all motoring related tax hikes, all the time.
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I think the most obvious thing that happened was the "Great Recession". Almost all states had huge budget shortfalls then. As mentioned above it is entirely possible and in fact likely that every penny from your gas tax went to roads and yet spending on roads decreased because the state spend money from the general fund normally spend on roads on other things. Things like education - which doesn't stop in a recession and Medicaid - which has spending increases in a recession as people lose jobs and go on Medicaid.