Still wary of gas tax promises

If you didn’t already notice, you will soon as you head to the gas pump to fill up.

Overnight, the state’s gasoline tax went into effect. Prices jumped by 12 cents a gallon and by 20 cents for diesel.

The California Legislature passed the tax as have more than 20 other states, who got tired of waiting for Congress to fund highway repair projects.

It’s the first such increase in California in the past 23 years.

Raising taxes is never easy, especially when you live in a gasoline-fueled, vehicle-dependent state.

The tax is expected to generate $5.2 billion a year, or $52 billion over the next decade. Not all of the money is earmarked specifically to repair state and local roads. It will also go to projects that will ease congestion and for building more public transit.

We did not back this tax when it was working its way through the Legislature. Our fear, and it still remains, is that the money will be raided and diverted.

It’s happened before and we suspect it will happen again.

At least, it includes a constitutional amendment requiring that the money be spent only on transportation projects, and it would create an inspector general to make sure money isn’t misspent.

Many years ago a gas tax was implemented, politicians took out billions in bonds and promised to fix the roads.

And instead of doing what they said, the money was diverted, leaving Californians on the hook for some of the highest gas taxes in the country and the pleasure of driving on the fourth-worst roads in the nation.

Caltrans, the state’s lead agency on managing roads, has also been under fire.

In 2016, state auditors said the entity was ripe for fraud, waste and abuse. Auditors also found that Caltrans was overstaffed at a cost of half a billion dollars a year.

There is no question the roads need to be repaired.

We just question the politicians’ ability to actually keep their hands out of the road tax till.