Ridgewood NJ, A great big shout out to Senator Bob Gordon, Assemblymen Tim Eustace and Joe Lagana, for voting YES for the gas tax. There’s going to be lots of pain at them pump because of them.
Motorists are seeing sharply higher prices at the pumps in New Jersey. According to AAA Mid-Atlantic the average price of a gallon of regular gas in the state on Friday was $2.43. That’s up 7 cents from last week.
Motorists were paying $1.92 for gas at this time last year. A 23-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase went into effect Nov. 1.
This now marks the fourth straight week that gas prices have risen in the state of New Jersey and New Jersey is now out pacing the national average gas price on Friday $2.34, up 4 cents from last week.
Over the last seven years, more than $99 of every $100 spent on transportation projects by the state Department of Transportation and NJ Transit has been borrowed.
From 2010 to 2016, less than $76 million out of almost $9.4 billion in cash outlays have been from current revenues, according to the Transportation Trust Fund Authority.
The rest has come from borrowing that has contributing to nearly $16 billion in debt. Yearly payments on that debt will be around $1.3 billion through 2029, then more than $1 billion annually for a dozen years after that.
JACKSON — The end has come for a long-celebrated tradition for Pennsylvania and New York drivers: Starting Tuesday, cheap gas in New Jersey is a thing of the past.
Cheap gas has long been the siren that lured drivers in neighboring states to New Jersey. And since residents there pay the highest property taxes in the nation, drivers have always seen the low fuel prices as one of the ways to keep down the cost of living in the nation’s most densely populated state.
Calls for Passage of His Legislation to Study & Control Excessive Road Costs
October 8,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Senator Mike Doherty (R-23) voted ‘NO’ on increasing the state gas tax by 23 cents per gallon, saying the state hasn’t done enough to control excessive costs related to road construction:
Sen. Mike Doherty at a roadside rally in Bridgewater on June 22, 2016 opposing a gas tax increase with Assemblyman John DiMaio, Assemblyman Erik Peterson, Americans for Prosperity-New Jersey, and concerned residents. (SenateNJ.com)
“My office has fielded thousands of calls from constituents who oppose this gas tax increase, and my vote ‘NO’ today was for them.
“Many callers have said that the state doesn’t use the gas taxes it already collects wisely, and it doesn’t deserve a penny more, let alone 23 cents per gallon more. I agree completely.
“If they’re going to force this tax increase upon unwilling drivers, the Governor, Senate President and Assembly Speaker should agree to advance and enact my legislation to get excessive transportation costs under control. That this cost-control bill continues to be blocked is unconscionable.”
Doherty is the sponsor of S-1888, which would create the “State Transportation Cost Analysis Task Force,” to examine state transportation spending and offer recommendations for reducing New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation road construction costs.
More than 25,000 people signed an online petition run by Doherty and Senator Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth) in opposition to the gas tax increase.
NJ Senator Mike Doherty (R-23) questioned New Jersey’s outsized spending on transportation infrastructure, saying that he has not found a satisfactory explanation as to why the state pays more than ten times what similarly populous states like Massachusetts pay to fix their roads, bridges and highways
Sweeney Trots out ‘New Jersey – Investing in You’ with Key Senators
They came bearing gifts in the Christmas season, – $174 million’s worth, to be precise – state Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3) and his colleagues in the Senate Democratic Caucus, the statehouse cough-up of seven weeks-worth of round table visits around New Jersey in the respective districts of the senators who now stood sedately at attention with Sweeney. Max Pizarro, PolitickerNJ Read more
Serious conversations about raising New Jersey’s gas tax to head off a looming transportation-funding crisis were put on hold earlier this year, so lawmakers could focus on the Assembly elections that were just held in all 40 legislative districts earlier this week. But now with those contests in the rearview mirror, the talk in Trenton has shifted back to transportation. John Reitmeyer, NJSpotlight Read more
Democrat Senate President Steve Sweeney Pushes for Gas tax Increase for unions ,criticizes Christie
DECEMBER 20, 2014, 11:55 AM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2014, 4:37 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Senate President Steve Sweeney has gone on offense, criticizing Gov. Chris Christie and calling on him to detail his plan for saving the imperiled transportation trust fund. But Sweeney has not said how he would pay for his own ideas.
As the Legislature wraps up the calendar year without a deal to address the fund, Sweeney along with Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto and Republican Gov. Chris Christie are still working behind the scenes to come to an agreement.
Thus far, Sweeney, the influential southern New Jersey Democrat, has been upfront in expressing what he wants the deal to look like: the fund should be beefed up to $2 billion from $1.26 billion, and money to municipalities should nearly double to $400 million.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Sweeney said his “bottom line” is the inclusion of rail projects in Hudson and Bergen counties, in Camden and Gloucester counties as well as freight rail infrastructure projects in the central part of the state.
“We are not gonna pit regions against each other,” he said. “The needs are great, they’re real and we have to advance them together. Too often it’s like us against them and that’s not how it should be,” Sweeney said.
While he says a tax increase is probable, he has not written or endorsed legislation detailing exactly what that tax would look like.
In part, that’s because talks with Christie and Prieto are still underway and no agreement would be possible without their support, Sweeney said. To publicly embrace a plan to pay for the fund — like an increase in the state’s 10.5 cent gas tax — could scuttle those talks, Christie said in an interview on 101.5 FM last week.
