Electric vehicle owners could pay yearly surtax in Maine, under proposed legislation
Maine Public | By Robbie Feinberg
Published April 26, 2023 at 2:41 PM EDT
Electric vehicle owners in Maine could soon be required to pay a new yearly surtax, under a proposal before the Legislature.
The measure, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Stanley Zeigler of Montville, would add a $72 yearly surcharge that EV owners would pay when registering their vehicle. Zeigler says those funds would go towards maintaining Maine's roads, and help to offset lost gas tax revenue.
"In order to have the ever growing number of vehicles, such as mine, to pay their fare share for maintaining our roads and highways," Zeigler says.
The state estimates that the average Maine driver spends about $164 per year on state fuel taxes, and another $100 in federal gas taxes.
The Natural Resources Council of Maine says that the bill could slow down EV adoption in Maine, and urges the state to look at other options for increasing transportation funding.
The Maine Department of Transportation didn't support or oppose the bill. But DOT Deputy Commissioner Nina Fisher says that 31 states have already passed special registration fees for electric vehicles. And she noted that many groups and states are looking at other ways of bringing in more revenue for roads, including fees based on the total number of miles traveled per year.
The full article can be read at:
https://www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2023-04-26/electri...
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Comment
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Comment by Long Islander on April 27, 2023 at 3:18pm
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If gas taxes are $264 a year for drivers as noted above, ($164 + $100 = $264), why would EV drivers pay only $72, especially if the EV's are very heavy and therefore, maybe harder on the roads? Maybe I'm missing something.
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Comment by arthur qwenk on April 27, 2023 at 12:40pm
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The subsidized free ride of these woke toys is about to end, as it should.
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They are heavy road destroying machines, laden with wasteful strip mined rarer earth metals.
To make them, they'll need a lot of batteries. And that means they need a lot of minerals, like lithium, cobalt and nickel, to be dug up out of the earth.
These minerals aren't particularly rare, but production needs to scale up massively — at an unprecedented pace — to meet the auto industry's ambitions.
And there's another big challenge: The existing supply chain is dominated by a single country: China
Maine as Third World Country:
CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power
Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.
Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT
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(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/
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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law
Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future
"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."
https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/
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