Funds for Roads

George Skelton’s Sept. 6 column expounding the virtues of retaining a sales tax to pay for added and improved highways is wholly misconceived. The sales tax has been condemned as the most regressive, unfair and unjust levy by every reputable economist since and including Adam Smith.

A more just and appropriate means of obtaining transportation revenues would be the adoption of special benefit assessments by the various counties, cities and other districts. Under such assessments, landowners, particularly the land speculators who profited through unearned windfalls in increased land values, would have to bear some of the costs of the project that created those windfalls.

But if such a just method of raising revenues were adopted, the fat cats who own the critical properties involved would have no enthusiasm whatsoever for transportation improvements.

STANLEY M. SAPIRO

Laguna Niguel