Over at the Mill they posted the first page of HB 367 from the 1921 Legislative session, which updated the 1919 gas tax.
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| The 1921 update to gas tax via The Mill (yellow added) |
About it they wrote:
History is in the Details. In February 1919, Oregon became the first State in the Nation to pass a per-gallon gas tax (one cent). As this bill shows, an additional one cent per gallon tax was brought up just two years later.
But they may have missed the more interesting detail.
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| Jan. 29th, 1921 |
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| September 1st, 1921 |
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| January 4th, 1922 |
The system of graduated fees by weight class represented a proportional approach to causes of road damage that might have been helpful to lean into. With that developed more, we would have an easier time with fees for studded tires, for example. We might have better acceptance of proportionate fees compensating for harms from greenhouse gases and oversized front grilles. We might have an easier time implementing tolling, decongestion pricing, or other road use pricing. It was a scheme and approach that had advantages for attacking future, unknown problems.
This law from 1921 represents a little bit of a dead-end. (Full text here.) Today we have a small amount of variable pricing in the fee system, but it is not really very proportionate. The gas tax itself is too small, and no longer keeps pace even just with inflation. As we understand better the harms from driving and emissions a stronger range and proportionality is something we might choose to revive.
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