As drivers go to renew their vehicles this year, they will be hit with a new fee tacked on their registration. The fee will fund the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s Highway Patrol division, which is estimated to cost $168 million this fiscal year. By law, the Highway Patrol has to be funded in its entirety, plus a 10 percent buffer, amounting to $185 million total.
The fee comes from the estimated 6 million Arizona vehicle owners who will renew their registration this year.
According to ADOT, that relies on the number of purchases of new and used vehicles, exemptions for vehicles such as those owned by governments and nonprofits, and the fact that some registrations come due annually while others are two- or five-year registrations.
When legislators passed the bill for the new fee in February 2018, they were told by state assessors that it would be around $18.
By law, the fee rate is calculated by the director of the Arizona Department of Transportation, John Halikowski. He calculated the rate far higher than legislators were told it would be and set the new fee in November, which would go into effect at the start of the new year.
With the new rate nearly double what legislators were told back in February, they balked last month. One of the last bills passed in the 2018 legislative cycle, written by Arizona Rep. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, [R-District 23], aimed to repeal that fee, but Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has said he would veto any such legislation. There are probably not enough votes in the legislature to override a veto despite the fact legislators were misled and Arizona drivers will have to foot the bill for at least the next year if not permanently.
Part of the high cost comes from the decision by Ducey and legislators to shift state money around to give Arizona teachers a pay raise following the Red for Ed strike last May. Rather than increase taxes to pay teachers, release some of the state’s surplus funds or find other means to raise funds to pay teachers, the state merely stole money from its road repair budget to pay teachers, then stole money from the Highway Patrol to fund roads and imposed a new fee on Arizona drivers.
Ducey and his supporters are loathe to call the new Highway Patrol fee a tax because Ducey campaigned on the promise that he would not raise any taxes during his time in office.
But it is a tax, no matter how Ducey spins it. A tax is a mandatory charge imposed by a government to fund government operations. A “mandatory fee” is just a synonym for tax and Arizona drivers, who are also Arizona voters, are wise enough to know the difference.
While politicians can campaign on the promise of not raising taxes, sometimes this is simply not possible and it is not a campaign promise that voters should be bewildered by nor ever believe. The needs of government to serve the people sometimes requires a new tax here or there to run the services elected officials are mandated to provide.
The late president George H.W. Bush learned the penalty of raising taxes after promising not to in 1988 and it cost him the White House in 1992. When will politicians learn that government is not so easily run and voters are not so dumb as to see a tax for what it is?
Politicians should just be honest and tell the electorate they will do their best to not raise taxes but sometimes it is not possible.
That being said, it would be foolish to assume a state growing as fast as Arizona would not need an occasional increase in taxes here or there to accommodate our growing population.
Putting a tax in a costume only makes the politician look foolish and we voters will remember. We always do.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
