Their report is here . The backdrop is stark: the gas tax was historically the bedrock of transportation financing in Massachusetts, but raising it is politically unpopular and its proceeds will shrink anyway as more people drive electric vehicles.
Meanwhile, though, a group of advocates got a jump on the task force, releasing their own roadmap .
The clock is ticking on the Healey administration’s transportation funding task force, which is supposed to issue its findings on ways to pay for the Commonwealth’s future needs by Dec. 31.
To fund the transportation system, the report calls for raising corporate taxes and eliminating certain tax exemptions often used by the wealthy.
They also reup two ideas that have come up a lot over the years: letting municipalities or groups of municipalities raise taxes for transit via ballot initiative, and “value capture” mechanisms that would allow transit agencies like the T to collect some of the extra economic benefits created by transit.
Here’s a common example: say the T opens a new commuter rail station, which has the effect of making an area more desirable. That will translate into higher property values, which will translate into higher property tax revenue for the municipality where the station is located. Value capture would let the T, or other agency, get a slice of new revenue it helped create. (The Globe editorialized in favor of a similar idea in 2015.)
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Letting municipalities voluntarily tax themselves for transit has also been bandied about for years. It’s common elsewhere in the country — and those votes, the report notes, are frequently successful.
Whether Healey’s 31-member task force embraces any of those ideas is an open question. Even the exact purpose of the task force is a little unclear — will it have concrete recommendations, or simply offer a “toolkit” for policymakers to choose from?
But with the T staring at a budget gap in the short term, and falling gas tax revenues on the long term horizon, something needs to be done — and soon.
Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at alan.wirzbicki@globe.com.