State Senator Bruce Tarr tells Heather Atwood suspending the state’s gas tax is more complicated than giving commuters a break in response to rising prices. Proceeds from the tax are used to improve transportation infrastructure by issuing bonds backed by future gas tax revenue.
Heather Atwood:
So, good afternoon, Senator Tarr, how are you today?
Bruce Tarr:
Good afternoon, Heather. I’m doing great, thanks. How are you?
Heather Atwood:
I’m good. I’m very well.
Bruce Tarr:
Good.
Heather Atwood:
So, it’s that time of year that you are working on the supplemental budget. What I know about the supplemental budget is it is, the governor’s version, is heavy with pandemic relief, right?
Bruce Tarr:
It’s important to understand the sequencing here, Heather. So, the governor initiates the process by filing a supplemental budget. It does have some COVID relief in it and some very significant things in it. The house then takes that bill up, and they’ve done that and they’ve passed their version of it. And that means the bill is now in the senate. And as we talk today on Friday, we’re going to be taking the bill up next week. We’re going to debate it on Thursday of next week. And senators have until Monday at 3:00 PM to be able to file amendments. So, the members of the senate right now are looking at the version that’s been proposed by the Senate Ways and Means Committee and deciding whether or not to file amendments and how they might want to change the bill.
Heather Atwood:
Well, I know that something that’s controversial right now is the fact that speaker Mariano said we are not suspending the gas tax. So, what will happen in the senate regarding that?
Bruce Tarr:
Well, it’s important that the presiding officers have something to say about subjects, but in the end, what matters is what the membership thinks in their representative capacity of the people of Massachusetts. And so, this is still in my mind, a subject to be debated and fully considered. We have a tremendous spike in gasoline prices and folks are really experiencing pain at the gas pump as they try to get to work or to get to school or get to medical appointments. And at the same time, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as we talk right now, has a budget surplus that’s about $1.7 billion above the benchmark that we’ve set for this year. And so, I think it’s a serious and legitimate subject of consideration about whether we should take some of those dollars and help relieve some of that pain that people are experiencing in a very real way, every day in Massachusetts.
But it is a bit more complicated than that, because we need to make sure that if we do suspend collection of the gas tax, that we use some of those dollars that I just referenced to backfill those accounts. Because we don’t want to default on our bonds, number one, that are used for transportation purposes. And number two, we don’t want to abandon of fixing roads and bridges, particularly right now, as we get into spring and we start to see the impacts of the winter and potholes and the need for road resurfacing. So, we need to make sure that we find a way to relieve that pressure that folks are experiencing and that pain, but also make sure that we don’t default on our obligations on our bonds and that we don’t default on our obligation to have good transportation infrastructure.
Heather Atwood:
Can you make that connection between the gas tax and the bonds and the infrastructure?
Bruce Tarr:
So, in many cases, when we do transportation bonds to finance the construction of roads and bridges, we pledge against those bonds, the revenue that’s collected from the gas tax, which goes into a transportation fund. So, we need to make sure that we say to bond holders and to the underwriting agencies, that we are going to make sure we keep our commitment. That if we suspend the gas tax, we aren’t going to leave bond holders in the lurch without being able to get paid the interest and the dividends that they intended to get when they purchased those bonds.
So, the credit of the state is on the line here, and we need to make sure that we don’t default and we don’t create a problem, and we maintain our bond rating. Because if we don’t do those things, they will have lasting consequences for the Commonwealth, in terms of being able to get future bonds in our cost of borrowing. So, we have to make sure to apply the surplus funding that we have to those obligations, to make sure that there isn’t a gap that would have very undesirable consequences.
Heather Atwood:
Well, two other argument I have heard or read concerning against suspending the gas tax, one is, is it a political act? Is it not that helpful, but it works politically for people? And the other is, and the governor has said this, he wants real tax relief for Massachusetts residents and he’s directing that at renters and low income individuals and homeowners, so how do you talk to that?
Bruce Tarr:
Well, in terms of it being political, I think nearly everything decision that we make is looked at to a political lens. That’s the nature of government and so it would be viewed that way. In terms of other kinds of tax relief, I would suggest that right now, when you’re going to the gas pump and you need to be able to on a household budget afford to be able to get to work, this is very real. And being able to provide some relief as against the highest gas prices that we’ve ever seen, it doesn’t get more real than that. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for other things. And I think it’s a mistake to view these things as mutually exclusive.
Bruce Tarr:
The governor has proposed the package a very far reaching package of things that are very long term in nature, and would become a permanent part of the tax code. And the gas tax suspension is not, it’s intended to be a very limited way to bring some relief right now. And hopefully, we’re not going to need that relief forever, that in the future, we’re going to see the abatement of the increase in gas prices. We’re going to see a restabilization of markets for energy products, and we’re not going to need this.
But somewhere here in the middle, there needs to be a way to respond to what people are having to deal with, even as we think about the things that the governor has proposed, which I support. He’s proposed again, a good range of things that make sense, but I would avoid getting into the situation where we see all kinds of relief as being mutually exclusive. We have the ability, we have the resources to maneuver carefully here to be able to meet a range of needs, and I think that’s where our focus should be.
Heather Atwood:
Well, you have been a real fan of electric vehicles and trying to bring this state into, basically making us carbon neutral. So, talk to us about that, how that would impact the gas tax.
Bruce Tarr:
So, in the long run, I think one of the important things is to move away from dependence on fossil fuels altogether. And in the future, if we were able to do that, we wouldn’t find ourselves in the situation that we’re in right now, where we’re worried about the price of fuel, and also worried about potential scarcity of fuel. So, from my perspective, isn’t enough to just look at a temporary suspension of the gas tax. We need to look at other tools as well. And so, I am a co-sponsor of the suspension of the gas tax with the appropriate backfill that I just mentioned, but I don’t think you can do that without also trying to solve the problem in another way.
So, I have filed legislation to increase the rebate for electric vehicles. Currently, it’s $2,500. I’d like to go to $3,000. And I’d also like to add to that program a rebate for charging stations. Because one of the things that we see people facing is, if they get the vehicle, they still have to find a way to charge it to make it useful in their lives. And so, right now, we are spending money from a settlement with Volkswagen and making the $2,500 rebate available. I’d like to add some of the surplus that I just talked about to that, to get to $3,000 and to add charging stations. Because it seems to me that if we only look at this through the lens of our immediate need, which is very important, as I just said, we also need to look at it in terms of the long term and getting ourselves away from this dependence.
Now, there will be some folks that will say, “Well, when you plug in the vehicle, some of the electricity is still being generated through burning fossil fuels,” and that’s true. But when we’re talking about electricity, it can be generated in multiple ways. And one of the paths we’re on as a Commonwealth and we should be, is to find different ways to generate that electricity. So, if we’re plugging into something that has a wide basket of sources of energy, that’s different than when we’re just burning directly gasoline. So, there’s a lot to think about here. And I really think that this is an important time in our history to think about this, because we have within our reach the ability to be on a path where we can think about a kind of energy independence that we really haven’t had the ability to grasp in the past.
And so, if we only focus on relieving some of the immediate pain, and we don’t think about the future, I think that would be a mistake. And that’s why I am supporting a package of bills to look at how we can gain independence, how we can reduce our use of fossil fuels, but also right now, how we can say to families whose household budgets are being destabilized by the cost of gasoline, that we’re going to give you some help.
Heather Atwood:
So, why don’t we finish up with a supplemental budget? So, what else is in there? What else should we know about that? What else is happening?
Bruce Tarr:
So, a couple of important things, and one of them is something we’ve talked about in the past, and that’s the importance of continuing the availability of outdoor dining for restaurants and the ability deliver cocktails from restaurants as well. These are two things that we saw restaurants use to get through the public health emergency very successfully, and those things expire on April 1st. So, we need to take action to be able to extend them. Now, you may recall that I work with some of my colleagues to try to do that. In the last supplemental budget, but the side pass, but the house did not agree to that. And yet this time, the house has included them in their version of the supplemental budget. And that’s why I’m saying that when a presiding officer makes a statement, it isn’t always a statement etched in stone, because in this case, the house came back and did what I think is the right thing.
Those things are in the senate version of the budget, supplemental budget already, without us needing to amend it. So, I think we can have a high level of confidence. We’re probably going to see those extensions. But in addition to that, the supplemental budget contains money for some very important things, and one of them is mental health, and specifically mental health needs around folks who are coming to Massachusetts from very difficult situations. Having been displaced from Afghanistan, having been displaced from Ukraine, trying to make sure that if folks make their way to our shores, that we can help them as they come from a very traumatizing situation, those things are already in the supplemental budget.
But one of the other things that we need to look at is the impact of the cost of home heating oil, and that impact directly touches on our home heating assistance programs. And on Cape Ann, we have a wonderful program that’s run by the folks at Action Energy. And they reached out to us fairly soon after we saw the cost of home heating oil go up and said, “We need a supplement. We can’t sustain these programs for the rest of the heating season with the dollars that we have.” So, I put together a letter and I got 20 colleagues to sign it or 19 colleagues to sign it. And we wrote to the committee of ways and means, and we said, “We need to put more dollars into a supplemental budget for this.”
Well, the house did $5 million, but the senate has $20 million so far in the supplemental budget for that account, and that’s really important. Similarly, we’re trying to meet the need of nursing homes who tell us that they simply don’t have the resources to provide adequate compensation to their staff. And as a result, they’re having a lot of out-migration of folks going to other employment situations and not staying at the nursing homes, and that’s creating a terrible problem.
And regularly in our office, we get calls from folks who are trying to place a loved one. And when we call a nursing home, they say we have a bed, but we don’t have the staff to serve that bed. And so, this is a much bigger problem that will be solved in the supplemental budget, but if we can put some resources in the budget now to help them retain staff, we can begin to buy some time to find a longer term solution. That’s not in the bill yet. I filed an amendment to be able to provide those resources. And next week, we’ll see how it goes.
Heather Atwood:
Well, there’s a lot of good things in that supplemental budget, at least the senate’s version. So, thank you so much.
Bruce Tarr:
Well, in credit to the house, their version is good too, and there’s a lot of important things. And like most things, Heather, this is a question of finding good compromise between the house and the senate. And after we pass our version of the bill, I’m hopeful that we’ll do that very quickly because of some of the timeframes that I mentioned. So, it’s always a pleasure to work in a bipartisan way, in a bicameral way, and I’m confident that on this supplemental budget we’re going to do just that.
Heather Atwood:
Well, my last question for you is, when are you going to purchase one of those fabulous Ford trucks?
Bruce Tarr:
Not that I’ve looked at them, but I think they’re referred to as the Ford Lightning, the F150 version. And it’s very interesting, but also very costly. And I don’t think there’ll be any additional funds for me to purchase one in the supplemental budget, so that might be a little ways on.
Heather Atwood:
All right. Well, maybe we can get the price to come down when, I don’t know, all the technology work out.
Bruce Tarr:
I think as they become more proliferate, the price probably will drop it. And again, I think it’s a direction that we’re moving in, particularly as we hear major auto manufacturers talking about within the decade, having their fleets be almost completely electric. I’m not sure that will happen in a complete way, but it’s going to happen in a substantial way.
Heather Atwood:
Well, thank you again for a great weekly conversation. Always appreciate it.
Bruce Tarr:
It’s always a pleasure, always a pleasure to talk with you and with your viewers on 1623. And a pleasure to have this great resource for our community. So, thank you.
Heather Atwood:
Thank you. All right, we’ll see you next week.
Bruce Tarr:
We’ll see you then.
