Peter Samuel examines Arizona’s House Bill 2396—which would modernize the state’s enabling legislation to facilitate privately financed transportation infrastructure—in this new Tollroadsnews.com column. The column highlights one key feature of the bill that I noted in my blog post last week—the fuel tax rebate for trips taken on new toll facilities. This is a key provision for other states to consider, as it directly addresses highway user groups’ concerns about “double taxation.”
Reason has discussed this sort of rebate here, here and here, among others.
The fuel tax rebate is actually part of Arizona’s existing, but severely dated, public-private partnership (PPP) enabling law (see Chapter 22 here). In my mind, bill sponsor Rep. Andy Biggs and his colleagues in the House made an astute decision to preserve the one thing worth retaining in existing law, while thoroughly upgrading the rest. The engrossed version of HB 2396 is here.