Raising State Tax on Gas

I generally agree with your stance that we need to raise taxes to provide for the common good. I am forced, however to question your assumption in “Pothole Mentality” (editorial, Aug. 10) that gasoline taxes should be increased to “keep up with present growth.”

Why are we again expected to pay for California’s runaway population growth and overdevelopment which do nothing except undermine our life style, which benefit few people, in fact, except developers and speculators? Why is it that developers themselves are not expected to pay for the increased burden on the infrastructure that their projects generate?

Developers contributed over $2 million to defeat Orange County’s slow-growth Proposition A, outspending the measure’s supporters by a factor of 60 to 1 in order to maintain a free ride at the public’s expense. An industry with this kind of slush fund is more than capable of paying its fair share.

MICHAEL C. BECK

Glendale