Talking Michigan Transportation
The Talking Michigan Transportation podcast features conversations with transportation experts inside and outside MDOT and will touch on anything and everything related to mobility, including rail, transit and the development of connected and automated vehicles.
Talking Michigan Transportation
Reprise: What 2024 polling said about removing sales tax from fuel
As lawmakers complete a Fiscal Year 2026 budget agreement, one component involves removing the sales tax on fuel and adding a commensurate amount to the fuel tax and putting it toward transportation.
This week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast revisits a 2024 conversation with a veteran Michigan pollster about his survey then showing an overwhelming number of voters want the taxes they pay at the pump to fix roads and bridges.
Michigan is among states with a sales tax on motor fuels. That tax, 6 percent, does not go to roads and bridges. By law, the proceeds support the school aid fund, revenue sharing for local municipalities and a minor portion helps fund local transit services.
Bernie Porn, president of the polling firm EPIC-MRA, explained that all survey respondents were asked, “Do you think that all of the taxes that you pay at the gas pump should or should not go toward funding improvements to Michigan’s roads and bridges?”
Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. With budget talks continuing here in Michigan, but broad agreement that the transportation component will involve a long-discussed proposal to remove the 6% sales tax on fuel. I'm resurrecting a discussion about polling on that concept from more than a year ago. The conversation with pollster Bernie Porn of the Lansing firm Epic MRA also included insights from polling over the years on other perceptions surrounding funding and building roads. What he had to say then about the public's view on not having anything they pay on sales tax on fuel go to roads is interesting, especially today. The budget that's making its way through to final approval now calls for backfilling those benefactors of the sales tax on fuel. That includes the school aid fund and some revenue sharing to local communities. And instead, since none of that sales tax went to roads, they will raise the fuel tax by a comparable amount to what that sales tax brought in. And that money will go to Rhodes. So I hope you find the conversation interesting. So once again, I'm with Bernie Porne, who is the principal at Epic MRA veteran pollster in the state of Michigan. He's been at this a long time and has uh experience in the legislature. So when he talks about his polling data, he can talk about what happens recently in the snapshot in time, but he also brings tremendous context and perspective from somebody who's been looking at public policy um in Michigan for a long time. I I don't want to date you too much, Bernie, but um why don't you talk about how many years you've been doing this?
SPEAKER_01:Since trees were new.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And then the dinosaurs came.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I I think the first poll I did was when I was in college in 1972.
SPEAKER_02:You were at Aquinas College with some friends of mine, as a matter of fact. Yes, indeed. Yeah. So let's talk about the the findings uh of this most recent poll. I think it's not surprising that people who already assumed that everything they pay at the pump was going to roads would say that it should. But um and and asked that in a simple way in a vacuum, most people would say, well, yeah. But then when you start explaining where that six percent sales tax that Michigan charges on fuel goes, um, you know, a lot of very important things, schools chief among them, but certainly some of that goes to revenue sharing. And a small sliver actually does go to transportation in terms of the comprehensive transportation fund, which funds transit, for instance, um, doesn't necessarily go to roads and bridges. But this gets complicated in a hurry, like everything with public policy. So I don't know, why don't you just give me the top lines of your findings?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we asked uh voters uh do you think that all of the taxes you pay at the gas pump should or should not go toward funding improvements to Michigan's roads and bridges? 82%, uh very high numbers, said yes, all taxes paid should go toward funding Michigan roads and bridges. 13% said no, not all taxes should go toward uh funding roads and bridges, and uh 5% were undecided. We then explained to them uh that uh Michigan is one of only six states that charges a sales tax on gas, and very little of the 6% sales tax collected at the pump goes to fund improvements to Michigan Roads and Bridges. In fact, the 6% sales tax collected at the gas pump generates about$1.1 billion per year, but only about$50 million or less than 5% goes to the Comprehensive Transportation Fund that goes to roads and bridges. Just under$800 million goes to the school aid fund, just over$100 million goes to local revenue sharing, and another$130 million goes to the State General Fund. Would you favor or oppose legislation that would require all of the$1.1 billion in funds collected from the 6% sales tax to go toward funding improvements to roads and bridges? And that number is lower than the 82%, obviously. 66% would favor such legislation, 38% strongly, and 25% would oppose it, uh, 11% strongly, with uh 9% undecided. That that is a pretty uh strong number. And uh when you look at partisan breakdown of uh of that number uh on that question, 73% of conservatives, 66% of moderates, uh, and a lower 53% of liberals uh uh say they would support it. And by party, uh 58% of Democrats, 64% of independent voters, and 75% of Republicans say that uh they would support uh having all of the 6% sales tax uh going to transportation. And uh, you know, there's a lot of other demographic breakouts uh uh that uh I could go over, but uh in a nutshell, the the I think the political party is probably uh the most important one because that uh is what uh if in fact uh there's an attempt to uh push this uh proposal, uh that will be what the legislators will be looking at.
SPEAKER_02:You think having done this for a long time and you know, working with lawmakers and working with various advocacy groups on your polling, is there any way uh to simplify this? I mean, you know, Prop A in 1994 was was framed in a way I think that was pretty simple for people to get their brains around. Prop one in 2015, while described um by someone as conservative as Rob Fowler, who was then with the Small Business Association of Michigan as a very elegant proposal, you know, had support from both sides, yet it didn't even get 20% in the November vote that year. Uh do you think there's a way? I mean, and and and I think that, and you can tell me what you think. I think even though it did a lot and it would have solved a lot of public policy problems in Michigan, it was just too complicated. And anytime something's complicated, it makes it easy for the opposition to blow it apart. Is is there any way to get this through to people?
SPEAKER_01:I think if you simply uh state that uh uh six percent uh sales tax is charged on uh uh uh tax uh or on uh gasoline uh uh at the pump and uh uh this proposal, proposal A, or whatever it would be, uh uh, or well, actually it could be done uh could it not uh by just the legislature? Or would it have to go on the ballot? No, I think it I think it could. If it can be done just by the legislature, uh all of the uh proposed uh legislation would take all of the$1.1 billion raised from the uh 6% sales tax and devote it to transportation. However, I do think that uh legislatively uh uh you would uh need to uh append that by saying uh uh previously uh a great deal went to uh uh education and also revenue sharing. And there's gonna have to be some uh combination in terms of other sources of revenue to uh meet the needs of uh of education and also revenue sharing, because uh I think you will end up with uh some pretty powerful uh interests that will uh suggest uh they're not in favor of all of the money going to transportation.
SPEAKER_02:Well, yeah, and I mean that that's the problem from a public policy standpoint. A long time ago, and I'm sure that this goes on in various forms in other states, but you know, somehow we pitted uh roads against schools for funding, and you know, they're all part of basic infrastructure, right? Our education system and and what we do to to grow youths and grow education, it's the same as the vital importance of you know how we get from A to B and you know how we live, work, and play, transportation is part of that. And that's that was the beauty of I think proposal one in 2015. It it did not harm the schools, it raised more money overall. Um ultimately it was it was gonna cost people more, but it was also gonna deliver a lot more. Um and again, it was easy to blow it apart because it was complicated. So it sounds like you're saying that you think uh based on your findings, you think there could be some bipartisan support for for doing this uh and and doing it in a way that holds schools and communities that get revenue sharing harmless?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think there is, and uh uh one of the things that I would uh love to see uh uh the legislature pursue, and uh uh of course you're gonna have uh uh opposition from uh business uh and uh probably many Republicans, and that is a uh a graduated income tax, uh, much like uh uh Minnesota has uh uh if you were to take that same proposal and implant it in uh Michigan uh with uh uh percentages going from just under 10% for people making over a million dollars and dropping it down to uh uh less than uh the 4% for those with the lowest income, uh where a vast majority of people would pay less on a graduated income tax, but it would raise uh, I think, between four and five billion dollars. Uh, you would then be able to uh uh provide the funding needed for uh education, not only holding them harmless, but providing more funding for uh not only education, but also transportation. And uh uh I think uh uh the the the revenue sharing uh uh could be held harmless and and possibly even an increase. And by the way, we have tested that many times, and it is supported by voters and to the tune of uh uh in the neighborhood of uh 65 percent.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I I mean again, given your vast history with this and and knowing that you talk to people and study issues in other states, why do you think this is so difficult in Michigan?
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh for one thing, the proposal in 2015 that was such a hodgepodge of uh of uh change changes and transfers and uh uh switching this for that and uh uh so much else that uh uh I know that the uh uh media folks who were working on it uh doing focus groups, uh they had a tough time even selling it in focus groups where you could explain it and show pictures and and everything else. Uh and uh when we tested it in uh in our polling, uh it never broke like 30 percent. And uh I knew uh that it was going to be beaten by even more than that. And sure enough, in a survey we did at the time for uh Kalmazou Risa, uh they were testing a uh uh special ed millage proposal, and uh we tested that where 65 plus percent supported the special ed millage, and then the superintendent of K Risa said, with this on the ballot that the governor placed on the ballot proposal, whatever a eight A or want number one uh in 2015, can that have an impact? I said it sure can. And we tested it and it showed that uh almost 80% were going to vote against it, which is in fact what happened, uh, and only 51% would vote for the uh uh special ed millage, which is where it ended up uh in uh in K Risa. It it is a complicated issue, uh, but uh I think if you simplify it as much as possible, saying changing from uh a division of how the 6% is uh uh is divvied up to all of it going to transportation,$1.1 billion, and the other interest held harmless by getting revenue from other sources. Uh, I think that would uh be a good approach uh to try and sell it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I think uh I mean, first of all, yeah, the complications of the 2015 proposal. I I remember well. Um I did participated in a number of discussions and media events and presentations to try to explain it, try to just explain, not advocate one way or the other, but just explain it because people had a lot of questions. Um and you know, it might have done something just to educate people about how roads are funded in Michigan, although I still see all the time um stories and various, you know, online associations that track things, that track taxes in various states, and it'll show Michigan among the highest for gas taxes, and that should always come with a big old asterisk because if you don't include the sales tax, um, Michigan's actual gas tax is more in the middle. Um, you know, people like to cite Ohio all the time. You know, Ohio's gas tax is eight and a cent, eight and a half cents higher. Even after Michigan passed the proposal in 2015 legislatively to phase in uh a minor increase in fuel taxes, Ohio went for 10 cents. So now Michigan's at about 30 and they're at 38.5, and they get$250 million a year in tolling revenue from the turnpike. And, you know, people say, well, Ohio's roads are better. Well, you know, pound for pound they're really not, but that's the perception sometime from when you're driving and when you happen to cross the border, and maybe I-75 in Toledo happened to have been worked on last year, and I-75 in Monroe County hadn't been worked on for 30 years. So you just think that their roads must be better, but they'll tell you that they have a lot of challenges too. This gets this gets difficult because people want to look for any excuse to not pay more, and legislators don't want to have to vote for that. The governor tried really diligently, uh, you know, went across the state explaining the problem, especially with looking at crumbling bridges, and couldn't get anything moved. And so she did what she could, at least for the state trunk lines that are under her jurisdiction, by doing the bonding, which is definitely making a dent, especially in the highest traveled roads. Um, there's not a lot that we can do at the state level for the local roads. MDOT helps local agencies with the bridge bundling and other assistance that they can provide. But getting a comprehensive solution like you're talking about that would help, you know, all local roads, uh city, village, county, and state trunk lines, I just think it would be a huge thing for our tourism industry and for so many businesses that talk about um you know the difficulty in attracting new business.
SPEAKER_01:That would attract, I think, uh a lot of new business. And and if it was part of a uh a comprehensive uh uh business uh uh attract uh attraction plan, I think it uh uh would be well worth it. Uh uh, however, you you cannot leave uh education uh nor uh revenue sharing out uh and take money away from them. Uh so I think that needs to be part of the equation uh in terms of uh finding more money. And a a good approach to do that would be uh uh going to a graduated uh income tax as one approach. Uh other than that, uh uh you know you could probably raise uh uh sales tax, but you then uh get into uh, I think uh more difficulty selling that uh to Democrats. And even uh you know, putting all of uh this money, uh$1.1 billion of the sales tax uh into transportation, there is less support among Democrats than there are among independents, and certainly less than there is among Republican voters. But uh there's there may well be a greater reluctance uh to do that among Republican legislators uh than uh either Democrats uh or uh uh those that uh uh are in competitive districts.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the regressive nature of the sales tax is always going to be a problem for some lawmakers. But I I think you you make a good point about how this all has to be balanced. I I wondered about your findings too, whether we've made a dent at all in helping people to understand that um the reason that roads have been so challenged in our state for a long time aren't because anybody's doing anything wrong. Uh, the contractors, the various road agencies that offer the contracts and work on designing these things follow national specs. The Federal Highway Administration has, you know, their own policies and procedures. There's an association, the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, that set these rules, and everybody's doing basically the same thing with the same kind of materials. It's just about how much you invest. Um, you know, Michigan has become a national leader in what's called asset management, meaning tackling the system and repairs from a scientific standpoint, using data to inform decisions, um, not just because they're innovative thinkers, but because they had to do something to make the money go further, because there just isn't enough of it. So, yeah, what did you find about that in terms of people's perceptions of how roads are maintained?
SPEAKER_01:Well, we have on a number of occasions uh tested uh uh perception of uh condition of the roads. And it has, we haven't done it uh probably in the last year and a half or so, but it has been uh rather negative. I mean, uh at one point it was like 94% uh uh negative uh rating, uh, but it has been improving. And uh not long ago we did some testing as to whether or not people preferred blacktop or preferred cement, and they all uh they fairly uh uh convincingly preferred uh blacktop, and uh uh however they thought it would not last as long. Uh but I knew at the time uh that uh if you uh prepare where you're going to lay uh new uh materials for uh roads, uh, that uh if you uh properly uh do the uh uh setup for the for the uh blacktop, that that can work very well.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting. When you say blacktop, uh that's you know, to people in the industry, they're thinking of that as asphalt or hot mix asphalt, they call it HMA. Um, and and cement is what isn't in concrete. So it's usually thought of, and you know, I probably have been at this long enough now that I I know some of these things that I didn't used to know as a journalist. But um, yeah, the concrete versus asphalt debate is is a heavy one, and it's uh it's an important competition in order to keep prices down, that we need all the industries to be healthy. Did do you get any sense of why people said that, that they think that asphalt or blacktop is is better than concrete?
SPEAKER_01:I think I think a lot of it has to do with uh not understanding what uh what are state and what are local roads. Uh that uh uh they uh a lot a lot of communities have uh uh not done all that well uh in terms of uh maining maintaining local roads. And if there is an area where that is occurring and uh most of your driving is on uh local roads and not that much on state roads, uh you uh uh tend to uh view uh the uh pavements uh negatively. Uh uh. And so I think that that's a big part of the equation, how it is perceived, because a lot of people don't think, oh, this is a local road, and it's uh not as uh uh well uh uh built uh as uh as a state road uh uh that uh I uh uh go on uh maybe a couple times a week.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting too, because you said I think part of that, even if they thought one lasted longer than the other, they in other words, you know, you get more bang for your buck, they still feel like one is better in the short term in terms of just their driving experience. Is that basically what you found?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they uh people thought that uh uh blacktop or asphalt was uh was smoother riding, uh uh it uh uh was uh better in uh in uh bad weather, uh uh uh whereas uh uh cement uh was more uh uh lasting in terms of uh uh road construction, but uh uh they didn't like driving on it as much. We'll be right back. Stay tuned.
SPEAKER_00:The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you that when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, person, or other object, it is a crash, not an accident. By reducing human error, we can prevent crashes and rebuild Michigan roads safely.
SPEAKER_02:Peter Taylor, who is a PhD that heads up uh National Concrete Institute at Iowa State University, and somebody I've talked to frequently about these issues, would definitely beg to differ and would talk a great deal about uh you know really well-made concrete and how long it can last and how you know how resilient it can be. So this is this is a debate that will probably never be settled, that's for sure. Well, bringing this this back home, um are you optimistic at all? Knowing that we still have uh very divided government, um, very very close in both the uh the House and the Senate. The Democrats have control actually, it's it's tied now in the House. Um do you have any faith that that something could happen over these uh well really in in this year, I guess, perhaps in Lame Duck? Um what's your I don't know, if you had to bet, what would you say?
SPEAKER_01:I would probably say that it uh it is unlikely because uh there are other issues that uh uh may well be more uh critical to uh deal with uh uh than transportation. Plus, uh I think there's a an awareness that uh there is federal funding that is available or still coming in, uh I think over the next what five years, four years, five years, uh uh in terms of uh uh funding for transportation.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the IIJA Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
SPEAKER_01:Um is that somewhere in the neighborhood of uh uh six or seven billion dollars, I think?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for for Michigan, it it's definitely helping, especially at the at the local level. A lot of that money was reauthorization. Um, you know, these reauthorizations happen every few years under different acronyms. Um it's it's it's all helpful, but it would certainly be setting false expectations to think that at all um was enough money to solve Michigan's problems, which are decades in the making.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's uh it's enormous in terms of the uh uh uh need to uh provide funding for uh uh road construction, but uh I really think that a part of the that it has to be enough so that uh uh local roads uh can be uh a part of the solution because uh uh you will continue to have that negative perception if most people are driving on local roads and not all communities are uh maintaining them as uh well as they can. And we have tested local roads, perception of local roads in a lot of communities, and and they will vary from 90% negative to uh 70% positive in some communities. And we have uh in some communities had had it as high as uh 70%. One one was my hometown of Flushing, where a few years ago where we where we did a survey.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and as you know, in this most recent election, uh on primary day, there were a handful of local roads issues uh on the ballot across the state. Yes, and most of them did did well. And I think uh, you know, the city of Grand Rapids in 2014 overwhelmingly passed an income tax for streets, and the the leaders at the time uh in the city of Grand Rapids were very aggressive about getting that money on the street, you know. So a lot of that work was going on right away so people could see it. I think it would probably pass again because people get it when you can actually see the work going on. And I think that's the case with the rebuilding Michigan bonding program and the amount of work that's been going on the last few years. I mean, you you can't have it both ways, right? You can't complain that the roads are crumbling and then complain because they're fixing too many. So that's a balance, too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and people will complain because uh uh they uh take longer to get to work for a few months because there's uh a one lane uh uh on uh a particular highway, which uh is about to take place, I think, on a portion near Lansing uh on 96. So uh uh that uh uh kind of perception is always going to be there uh where people complain about uh uh having only one lane uh to drive on on a highway. But at some point it ends, and then all of a sudden they have a wonderful uh uh pavement to drive on.
SPEAKER_02:That's right, yeah. Well, Bernie, thank you as always. I really appreciate your insights and uh uh appreciate what you do to help various organizations and policymakers understand what the citizens are thinking and you know what they want. So um we'll have to talk again sometime.
SPEAKER_01:Love to do it anytime, Jeff.
SPEAKER_02:I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Machine Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or BuzzSprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Deviler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proofs the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jackie Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.