CONCORD – Nashua Democratic State Rep. David Campbell scored a huge political victory Thursday with a unanimous committee vote for his plan to increase over four years the state’s gasoline tax by 15 cents a gallon.
Campbell said the increase would raise nearly $1 billion over the next decade and close an annual $74 million hole in financing state road and bridge work.
“This is going to make a dent in the problem; not totally fix the problem,” Campbell said adding the shortfall has grown much worse since the State Senate killed a 15-cent increase the New Hampshire House approved four years ago. “We were at the tipping point back then. We are over the tipping point now.”
The 18-0 vote from the House Public Works and Highways Committee that Campbell chairs came after its ranking Republican and ex-Chairman, House Republican Leader Gene Chandler of Bartlett agreed to miss the vote.
After the vote, conservative Republicans and their interest groups blasted the result.
A day earlier, Campbell had dropped from his bill a three-year, $15 annual surcharge on auto and truck registrations and in turn bumped up the gas tax increase up to 15 from 12 cents per gallon.
Campbell pegged the average, annual increase of $80 for a motorist who drivers 12,000 miles a year with a car that gets 23 miles per gallon.
“That’s the fix; that is what it is going to cost,” Campbell maintained.
The gas tax of 18 cents per gallon hasn’t been raised since 1991.
Once fully implemented, the state’s gas taxes would go from the 41st highest to tied for 11th highest currently according to the National Taxpayers Foundation.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Morse, R-Salem, vowed to fight the tax hike after sitting through the committee vote.
“I don’t believe the Senate will pass a $1 billion increase in the middle of a recession,” Morse said.![]()
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