Governor Patrick's recent toll hike announcement was met with, let's say, a bit of negativity. Almost immediately, we started hearing how much more fair a gas tax would be.
Some say that was the plan all along: Announce such ridiculous toll hikes that an option we would have rejected in the past would suddenly become palatable.
Conspiracy theory or not, here we are.
An 11 cent gas tax hike is now on the table, and it's a proposal that would eliminate those toll hikes. We're curious (see what I did there?) what you think about it. Is the gas tax a better way to pay for the Big Dig? Is there a better way?
My personal opinion: Massachusetts should have used the
"boiling frog" approach. Little gradual increases here and there are more palatable than an 11 cent increase in one shot. Same with the tolls. Why did they have to suddenly double? Maybe if we didn't look to just
capital gains taxes for the lions share of our revenue growth, we would have realized that we either (a) needed more revenue from other sources or (b) couldn't afford some of the services we provided.
*no frogs were harmed in the writing of this blog post
