Opinion

Jersey’s feeling gassy

Across the Hudson, about the only tax advantage New Jersey residents have over other states is low gas taxes (about half what New Yorkers pay). Now the pols may take that crumb away from them, too.

A Democratic state senator, Ray Lesniak, has proposed raising the per gallon tax 15 cents over the next three years. Others want to hike it even more. New Jersey’s roads need repair, they say, and the Transportation Trust Fund is broke.

We don’t deny either claim. But before state lawmakers go raising one of the few low taxes they have, they ought to step back and take a look at how they got into this mess in the first place.

Daryn Iwicki of Americans for Prosperity reminds us the Transportation Trust Fund is in trouble because its funds have in the past been raided for other projects and the state has relied on debt to finance road repairs.

Then there are the high costs. According to the most recent highway report from the Reason Foundation, New Jersey pays 8.4 times more than the national average for road work, which works out to roughly $1.2 million per mile. Granted, repairs will always be more expensive in a heavily urban state like New Jersey. But by any measure Garden State taxpayers are getting too little bang for their highly taxed bucks.

Gov. Chris Christie rightly resists a tax increase, which could end up coming on top of an even larger hike at the federal level. But he and the state can’t simply keep borrowing for repairs. If New Jersey doesn’t want to drive itself into a ditch, its political class needs to start making hard choices about spending instead of fueling them with ever-higher tax rates.