Let's see here. Oregon already has one of the most sagging economies in the Pacific Northwest. Eastern Oregon is a backward wasteland where people actually live without connections to phone or electricity, however many manage with solar power of some sort. Oregon has more government interference with people's every day lives than probably any of the remaining PNW states. Now it isn't enough to charge a tax on gas per gallon, but they now want to charge it per mile.

Let's see why this isn't going to work.

1. Complexity.

The less complex a tax is to collect, the less the overhead there is to collect it. The last thing you want is overhead to eat into a tax revenue source. The less efficient a tax collection method the less useful it is to the taxing entity. Equipping Oregon drivers with GPS units designed to assess tax at the pump is going to be expensive and technically difficult, along with certain ways to defeat the devices. Sure government can mandate that GPS devices be placed on cars at buyer cost, but that is not citizen friendly, and definitely will have an impact on vehicle sales. And you can mandate that fuel dealers place receivers on their pumps and buy pumps that will assess tax based on what the GPS unit tells them, however that isn't business friendly, potentially sending some fuel dealers out of business. What about travelers and tourists? Will Oregon hand out a GPS tax calculation unit at the "checkpoint" into the state from their neighboring states? I wouldn't be surprised if there is some constitutional law there that may relate to interstate trade laws and laws surrounding what you can ask of non-citizens of Oregon.

2. Gas taxes are not collected and distributed specifically to road maintenance.

Nearly every state has taken its gas tax and over the years diverted significant sums of it into general funds and funds that do not service road projects and road maintenance. As a general rule, I think most states are lucky if 25% of their gas taxes actually end up as pavement. The rest gets whittled away into other things, usually totally unrelated to pavement. This complicates Oregon's gas tax proposal. So, now they want to try to tax per mile and by zone, but only a fraction of the funds collected will actually go into pavement and improvements in those zones. I don't see Oregon scrapping the current distribution of gas taxes collected so that this system works as it should, miles driven = taxes collects = direct funding to DOT. That just isn't going to happen.

3. Market impact

State legislatures are rarely cognizant of the impact of their tax decisions. They just look at the revenue stream that they want and go after it by any means they see fit. However, taxes have a very negative effect on economies in general. The lower your taxes, the stronger your economy. The higher your taxes, the weaker your economy. GNP/GDP = Ix + Cx + G - Tx. It has been many years since I took Macroeconomics, however I recall this equation as a good explanation of what taxes do to an economy and the impact of government spending. x is the multiplying factor in an economy or economic system. In the U.S. It is a regional issue. I is industrial consumption, C is consumer consumption, G is government spending and T is taxes. Without using numbers, we can see that I and C have both additive and multiplicative effects on an economy. Both are strongly positive. G (government spending) is only additive. It has no multiplicative effect. Taxes have a multiplicative and negative effect on an economy, reducing wealth. Now, with all of this said, the formula basically states that Private sector spending and investment have a strong positive effect on an economy; government spending is positive, however not strong and taxation reduces the ability of the private sector to create wealth.

So, here is Oregon, basically being greedy and continuing to believe that government comes first, when in Macroeconomic terms and what plays out in real economies, government needs to come last, do less and impede business and individuals with less taxes and fewer punitive and senseless regulations.

It has been said:
Hybrid drivers come in 3 flavors, greenie, techie and cheapie. Pick any 2.
2005 Prius, Melinium Silver over gray, package 5 (AI)