Truckers slam Lamont’s $90 million ‘mileage tax’

HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed “mileage tax” to raise $90 million a year for the state’s failing transportation fund, would likely allow out-of-state truckers to avoid the expense, while hitting hard Connecticut’s 8,000 registered commercial haulers, according to the leader of the state organization representing them.

Joseph Sculley, president of the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut Inc., said Wednesday that he hopes state lawmakers ignore the proposal, just like they rejected the governor’s plan for trucksonly highway tolls last year.

But Lamont said that the estimated $90 million a year would allow Connecticut to leverage federal funding for a billion dollars in projects over the next five years. And Speaker of the House Matt Ritter said that it makes sense to have largest trucks pay for their wear and tear on state roads.

“We’ll listen to people’s concerns,” Ritter said. “But the idea is that a 50,000pound truck causes more damage.”

Sculley, in a reprise of arguments that helped kill Lamont’s plan for trucksonly tolls, said that Connecticut tractor trailers pay an average of about $17,000 in annual state and federal fees, including more than $9,000 per vehicle to the state.

The 500-member organization includes every kind of hauler, from beverage delivery to construction and long-haulers. He recalled that since the last time state officials proposed a mileage tax back in 2017, most of the 22 states that had similar levies abandoned them because of the trouble in collecting the money from trucks that pass quickly through states.

“This is a tax that will slam in-state business and out-of-state trucking companies are going to evade it,” Sculley said in reaction to a Hearst CT Media report indicating that Lamont’s budget includes $90 million in new revenue from the heaviest trucks on state roads and highways. “We know that because it happens in other states.”

Sculley said he was disappointed that nearly a year after the governor declared truckers essential workers, he has targeted them for more revenue.

“Truck tolls were in his last budget and they didn’t make it,” Sculley said. “I think there could be bipartisan opposition to this.”

He said that the only way to enforce such a plan would to have roadside enforcement, which neither the State Police, nor the state Department of Revenue Services have personnel to administer the tax. “It seems like we’re trying to go back to a failed model.”

Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director who is secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, said that trucking companies would be assessed on a monthly basis for large tractor trailers that drive through the state and that keeping track of them won’t be hard for the DRS.

Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford, sided with the truckers. “Clearly it’s a tax,” he told reporters during a Zoom spin session with reporters after the budget address. “It’s a regressive tax and it is surely going to fall to the middle class.”