INDIANAPOLIS — State Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, tried to sell his road funding plan Thursday to a skeptical audience of mostly Republican senators who seemed disinclined to support tax increases in an election year.
Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee listened politely as Soliday explained that House Bill 1001 emerged from a five-year process of carefully evaluating Indiana's infrastructure needs and different ways to pay for improvements.
He said the plan's $1 per pack cigarette tax hike and 5 cents per gallon gas tax increase would be little noticed by most Hoosier motorists — who are getting a bargain paying an average of just $108 a year in direct road taxes — but would go far in maintaining state and local highways for years to come.
The committee chairman, state Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said he applauded Soliday "for having the courage to take this on this year."
But Kenley did not come anywhere close to endorsing the proposal.
Similarly, state Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek, chairman of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee, was puzzled by the GOP-controlled House balancing its roads tax increases with a gradual reduction in the income tax rate, since that would reduce funds available for all other state needs.
The committee postponed any decision on whether to change Soliday's proposal or advance it to the full Senate.
House members, many of whom already are on record voting for the tax increases, generally are not enthralled with the Senate roads measures that spend borrowed and surplus funds to make improvements in only the next four years.
For example, the state reserves of local income tax revenue that the Senate voted to allocate mainly toward local roads in Senate Bill 67, the House approved returning to counties and municipalities with no strings attached in House Bill 1110.
It's expected that lawmakers from both chambers will work to devise a compromise roads plan during the month remaining in the legislative session.