An effort in the Texas Legislature that would have had drivers digging a little deeper into their pockets to fill up their tanks has died.

The bill, HB5, would have tied the state’s fuel tax to the rate of inflation, but it remained in the House Ways and Means Committee after the deadline for House bills to advance to the Senate.

The current tax rate for gasoline and diesel is 20 cents a gallon. It hasn’t changed since 1991.

That hasn’t kept up with the rate of inflation, and left the state with a loss of real dollars from the budget used for building roads statewide, said Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock.

Krusee, the bill’s sponsor and chairman of the House Transportation Committee, recently told the Austin American-Statesman the state lacks 40 percent of what it needs for highways and other projects.

He said linking the fuel tax to the Consumer Price Index would have meant as much as $50 million dollars more per year in revenue.

That would have amounted to about a half-cent-a-gallon increase annually, bringing the state fuel tax up to 20.5 cents a gallon in fiscal 2006.

Three-fourths of revenue from the fuel tax goes to the state highway fund and one-fourth to public schools.

Krusee told the newspaper the tax hike wasn’t intended to solve the state’s backlog of highway projects. It was an effort to keep the state running in place, he said. He warned the shortfall would increase every year until something is done.