SENATE REPUBLICANS PROPOSE COMMON-SENSE TRANSPORTATION AMENDMENTS TO HOUSE BILL 1515 Dems Reject All GOP Amendments as Senate Rams through Gov. O’Malley’s 87% Gas Tax Hike In an almost five-hour long session on Good Friday, Maryland Senate Republicans proposed, and Senate Democrats rejected, over a dozen amendments to Governor O’Malley’s gas tax bill that would have implemented common-sense transportation solutions to help fix the state’s road woes. In attacking the most offensive provision of the bill, which ties Maryland’s gas tax to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, Senate Minority Leader E.J. Pipkin (R – Cecil) argued “There’s something fundamentally flawed with an indexed gas tax compounding annually. Indeed, the Governor will have an annual gas tax increase without a vote of the legislature.” Sen. Ed Reilly (R – Anne Arundel) backed up this amendment by pointing out that the automatic and eternal tax increases mandated by the CPI language “provide an opportunity for our legislators to side step our constitutional duty to review and approve tax increases in the future.” Members of the Senate Republican Caucus also fought for more transparency in the implementation of this new gas tax by proposing various amendments that would have required, among [...]
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