Per-Mile Taxes, Gas Taxes, Etc.

* First the Southern California Assn. of Governments wants to charge us 2 cents per mile to drive (March 11). Then President Clinton proposes to allow the states to charge tolls for driving on the interstate highways (March 13).

Here’s a better idea: Just use the gasoline taxes we’re paying already.

In 1993, President Clinton and Congress increased the federal gas tax from 14 cents to 18.3 cents per gallon. We gullible taxpayers assumed the money would go to the Highway Trust Fund to improve our roads. In the kind of bait-and-switch that would send a businessperson to jail, the president and Congress dedicated the 4.3 cents to the general fund as part of Clinton’s budget reconciliation package.

Last year the House voted to repeal the tax increase, but the Senate never took up the bill.

Surely SCAG’s 2-cents-per-mile tax and Clinton’s highway tolls could be avoided by giving us back the diverted revenue. Just as surely, we taxpayers should be reluctant to pay more transportation taxes that government officials will be tempted to siphon away to other programs.

REED ROYALTY

President

Orange County Taxpayers Assn.

San Juan Capistrano

* The following comments are in regard to the proposed improvements to Laguna Canyon Road, the planned freeway from central Orange County to Riverside County through the Santa Ana Mountains and the suggested 2-cents-per-mile tax on automobiles.

Extensive improvements are badly needed for the dangerous Laguna Canyon Road and are long overdue. This should be done as soon as possible, regardless of any real or imagined environmental concerns, costs or personal likes or dislikes, because human lives are at stake.

The county’s and the state’s primary concern should be to develop a safe four-lane road that will not flood out in even the heaviest of rains.

A freeway or a safe four-lane highway from central Orange County to Riverside County is another badly needed road that is long overdue. Many deaths and severe injuries on the Ortega Highway and even on the 91 Freeway could have been avoided if this highway had been in place years ago.

The suggested 2-cents-per-mile tax is the most insane thing I have encountered in many years. Besides being another drain on the time and money of every citizen, it would increase the size and cost of government. Departments would be built up to monitor and enforce this ridiculous tax; these additional bureaucrats would consume most of the additional money collected.

If government must have additional money and can justify it, it already has the means to collect it by just increasing the tax on fuel.

DAVE CONNELL

Laguna Beach