Top State Senator: Connecticut Mileage Tax ‘Dead'

One of the top members of the Connecticut General Assembly said Thursday that any proposal of a mileage tax would never see Senate approval.

“The idea was dead last year. The idea is still dead,” Senator Bob Duff of Norwalk said during an interview Thursday.

The Connecticut Department of Transportation received $300,000 from the transportation spending package passed by Congress this year and the funds were specifically for funding a study on a mileage tax. Duff said those funds will be spent, but any final project will have no chance at being enacted as long as he’s the Majority Leader of the State Senate.

“The department of transportation can study this thing nine ways to Sunday: top, down, diagonally, sideways, however they want to do it. We’re not going to pass it in the state senate. The idea is dead.”

Republicans had been the ones driving the mileage tax as an election year issue. They’ve described the idea as outrageous, even though there was never any indication a mileage tax would ever come to fruition.

Minority Leader Sen. Len Fasano, of North Haven, had criticized Democrats for not calling a Special Session of the General Assembly to formally vote idea.

Duff described calls like that as 'Trump-like' and said that would only be a waste of money for taxpayers considering the issue won’t even be considered.

The worst part of a mileage tax, Duff said, is that Connecticut drivers would likely be the only ones shouldering the cost.

“We estimate that about 40 percent of the cars that travel on Connecticut highways are from out of state. So that means state residents are bearing all of the costs. That is patently unfair.”

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