A group of Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin has offered a bill that would give drivers in the state a slight reprieve from high fuel prices.

Representatives Robin Vos, Pat Strachota and Don Pridemore introduced a bill this past week that would cut the states’ 32-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel fuel to 15 cents for four months. The tax break reportedly would cost the state $150 million in fuel tax revenues.

The bill – AB729 – is in the Joint Committee on Finance.

A similar plan was implemented last year in Florida. Lawmakers cut the state’s gas tax by 8 cents per gallon for the month of August, saving motorists there $59.7 million.

And in September, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue OK’d a month-long moratorium on the state’s 7.5-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. It included a suspension of Georgia’s 4 percent sales tax on fuel. The moratorium expired Sept. 30. The tax breaks cost the state about $75 million in tax revenue.

Vos, of Caledonia, said a temporary price break is the least that state lawmakers can do.

“I can’t control OPEC, I can’t control crude oil output in the Gulf, but I can work with my colleagues to try to help people who need help right now with gas prices that are going through the roof,” Vos recently told Land Line.

Vos said the loss of state revenue would be offset by using money left after Gov. Jim Doyle’s vetoes of the state’s two-year budget, which transferred additional money from the state’s transportation fund to the general fund.

“If you’re going to collect it, it should be spent on roads and transit. If you’re going to collect it and spend it somewhere else, we shouldn’t collect it in the first place,” Vos said. “Our plan is to take the money he raided out of that transportation fund and use it as a 15-cent cut on all motor vehicle fuel.”

But the office of the Democratic governor says the revenue has already been designated for schools.

Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder told The Associated Press that taking the money away now would drive up property tax bills.

Instead, the governor is pushing an alternative to ease the burden on consumers.

A bill in the state’s Assembly would repeal the state’s minimum markup requirement for diesel and gasoline. The rule has been in place since the 1930s.

AB505, sponsored by Rep. Jeffrey Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, would strike provisions in state law requiring markups of 3 percent for wholesalers and 6 percent for retailers.

State law prohibits the sale of fuel at below cost, which is designed to prevent businesses from selling at a loss in order to drive out competitors.

If signed into law, the governor’s office said fuel prices would drop about 9 cents “virtually overnight.”

– By Keith Goble, state legislative editor
keith_goble@landlinemag.com