LANSING –The Michigan House of Representatives today approved a plan that will help keep negotiations for transportation funding going between the Governor, House and Senate, and ultimately help the state maintain important federal transportation funding.
"This plan will bring in important dollars to many of our communities around the state," said State Representative George Cushingberry Jr. (D-Detroit) "By increasing the funding for Michigan's roads, bridges, and transit infrastructure, we will create over 125,000 new jobs for our workers and bring billions of dollars into our economy. We believe the Senate will support these measures and look forward to the Governor signing these measures into law."
The plan Rep. Cushingberry supports will allow individual counties to impose their own tax on gas in addition to state gas and sales taxes. The plan also will allow two adjacent counties to impose a tax of up to 5 cents per gallon, and three adjacent counties to impose a tax of up to 7 cents a gallon. Under this plan, counties will be able to create their own retail gasoline and diesel taxing system, which will help increase local tax revenue for public transportation purposes.
"This plan will go a long way toward ensuring that Michigan will have less of an impact on the environment," Cushingberry said. "As the rest of the nation focuses on going green, our state is taking the necessary steps to not only go green, but also dedicate more dollars to an efficient public transit system. By putting the choice of how to handle the gas tax in the hands of our counties, we can focus on creating good-paying jobs now and getting our economy back on track."