House Transportation unanimously endorses lifting $75 annual surcharge on gas hybrid cars
Idahoans with gas hybrid vehicles would be relieved from paying a $75 a year surcharge that lawmakers imposed in 2015, under legislation that cleared a unanimous House Transportation Committee this afternoon.
“The basic thing was back in 2015 … we didn’t know what a hybrid was at the time,” said Rep. Steven Harris, R-Meridian, the bill’s sponsor. “There two kinds of hybrids.”
One, he said, “like a Prius, only uses gas – they pay the gas tax. They have an efficient engine. And then there’s, of course, the plug-in hybrids that do get about half their mileage off the grid.” But the 2015 fee hit both. Harris’ bill, HB 20, would apply the $75 surcharge only to plug-in hybrids, not gas hybrids. It wouldn’t change the $140 surcharge that lawmakers imposed on plug-in electric vehicles that don’t use gas.
The charge was imposed as part of a package of transportation funding bills agreed on late in the 2015 legislative session. When its sponsors last year tried to remove it from hybrids, it got caught up in political fight between the House and Senate over transportation funding, and died.
Today, all the testimony in the committee was in favor of the bill. Ed Wardwell of Boise, who House Transportation Chairman Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, noted was his 8th grade teacher, told the lawmakers, “I felt like I was being penalized for something I was … doing to try to have a clean and efficient car and get better gas mileage.”
The original thinking behind the surcharge was that electric and hybrid owners didn’t buy as much gas, but still used roads, so the fee was intended to make them pay their fair share. However, it didn’t take into account the fact that gas hybrids are powered only by gas, not by a plug-in electric charge.
“Withdrawing the $75 fee against the gas hybrid is a very civil act,” Wardwell told the committee. “We thank you for your civility and your leadership.”
Ken Miller of Boise told the committee that he owns a Prius and his wife has an electric vehicle. “So my wife and I pay an extra $225 a year for the privilege of driving low-emission vehicles,” he said.
HB 20 now moves to the full House. To become law, it needs passage both there and in the Senate and the governor’s signature.
