Republican roads plan to hear more testimony Tuesday

A Republican-backed plan to fund road repairs in Michigan could be voted out of a state House committee Tuesday.

The proposal involves removing the 6% sales tax currently charged on gas sales and replacing it with a higher fuel tax that would go toward road repairs. The bill package sponsors say consumers wouldn’t see any difference in how much they pay.

The bills would also send around $2.2 billion in corporate income tax revenue to roads as well.

State Rep. Pat Outman (R-Six Lakes) chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He said he plans to add another bill to the package that would create a neighborhood road fund to make sure side streets don’t get forgotten.

“It’s a fund specifically for certain streets that might not be federally aid eligible or ones that are most neglected that usually don’t get the adequate resources to it,” Outman said Monday.

Outman said the fund would be a good deal for smaller units of government like townships since they wouldn’t necessarily have to match what county road departments spend on road projects.

While House Republicans are pushing forward with their road funding plan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is promoting her own.

Like Republicans, Whitmer has also suggested using all taxes collected at the gas pump for road repairs. But she’s also looking to have large companies and the marijuana industry pay more to help with roads too.

Outman said a compromise is still a ways out.

“The bottom line is the vast majority of her money is generated through new revenue sources. And then the vast majority of ours is through existing revenue and just rather reprioritizing some existing funding,” Outman said.

Some concerns have arisen about what would happen to school funding under the proposals, given that it depends largely on sales tax revenue that would no longer be collected on gas.

Republicans say they’ve answered that concern by dedicating an extra $775 million to the School Aid Fund.