This morning the Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance held a meeting at the state capitol. The committee is made up of legislators, businessmen, and county officials. The purpose of these meetings and this committee (and this was discussed thoroughly in the earlier sessions a couple of months ago) to decide how our highway systems in Arkansas should be, as the name suggests, financed.

In today’s session there was quite a bit of back and forth regarding issuing a mandatory sales tax on goods purchased online. The reason being if there was a new tax placed on goods bought at local stores to fund a new highway system/improve our current road conditions some people might skip out on buying locally in order to save a few dollars from an online vendor. Essentially the discussion boiled down to “should we suggest stream lining the sales tax or not? Maybe. Maybe not.” This option is still on the table and will be discussed at their next meeting.

Here’s where the meeting got interesting. The committee has been tossing around “excise tax” ideas for the last few months now, and the subcommittee of the committee strongly recommends these options for funding our highway systems.

Now, what exactly is an excise tax? It’s basically a tax on to sale of a specific good. In this case – gas, diesel, and/or wholesale motor fuels. In all actuality this type of tax may not directly affect us when we pay at the pump; however it will affect our pocketbooks when we go to the grocery store. The reason being that a farm that grows the squash or the company that distributes the cereal has to pay more in production costs and, in order to make a profit, must shift the costs on to the consumer.

Hmm… let’s think about this shall we? We’re still in the depths of a recession and the only viable options for funding new or improved highways are taxes that will affect our families. Here’s an idea. How about cut the pork instead of raising taxes on the rest of us? We have the 3rd highest paid state lottery director in the nation. Why? The actual disbursement of this “scholarship lottery” revenue to deserving college students has left much to be desired, so where is all of the extra money that wasn’t used for salaries or scholarships going?

Better yet – let’s look at the growth of our very own state government. We are the 5th fastest state in government growth since the year 2000. Yet our population has only increased 1998-2008 was 8.7%. The biggest employer in the state is the actual state government! It makes no sense.

If we constrained spending and cut the pork out of our state government we would be well on our way to being able to afford new and improved infrastructure versus indirectly enabling our cost of living to increase. If this committee is serious about helping the people of Arkansas and improving our chances of bringing in businesses they should put aside the perceived desire to recommend a new tax and look at viable alternatives.