Arguably the most substantive part of Governor Chris Gregoire's State of the State address this morning, was her proposal of a 10-year, $3.6 billion transportation infrastructure funding package. All of the revenue increase from 2003's nickel gas tax increase, and 2005's voter-approved 9.5 cent increase have already been bonded for existing projects, so there's little money left to address the state's growing maintenance and improvement backlog.

Gregoire said that the Connecting Washington Task Force identified $21 billion in road improvements and projects, and implored lawmakers to work closely with their constituents to develop funding solutions.

So how does Gregoire propose to fund her package? Curiously, not through a gas tax increase, but through a menu of tax and fee increases headlined by a $1.50 per barrel tax on oil that would raise $2.75 billion over ten years, plus, no doubt, the ire of the well-heeled oil refiners. Other taxes include an additional $15 passenger vehicle weight fee ($760 million over ten years), a 15 percent increase on heavy commercial vehicle license fees ($177 million), and a $100 fee on electric vehicles ($10 million). I find that last one particularly baffling, as the paltry amount raised hardly seems worth disincentivizing the shift toward electric cars.

My guess is that, knowing any revenue package would ultimately come before voters, Gregoire chose to craft a proposal with the least impact on the people who would be asked to approve it. Hence the hit on big, bad oil companies, rather than the average driver. But in fact, we're due for another gas tax increase, and I'm not so sure voters would balk at what would only amount to a day's worth of price fluctuations at the pump.

The thing about the gas tax is, because it's an excise tax—a fixed amount per unit rather than a percentage of the sale—its real value gets eaten away by inflation over time. In fact, the current 37.5 cents a gallon tax is now worth only 32.37 cents in 2005 dollars, the last time a tax increase was approved. Inflation has eaten up more than a nickel since that 9.5 cent hike.

Thus, to keep pace with inflation, the gas tax must be constantly raised over time. So you'd think another nickel or two at least could be easily justified.

But whatever your revenue or transportation preferences, there's little doubt that additional revenue is needed if we're going to at least maintain the transportation system we have. The fact is, gas taxes adjusted for inflation are currently at historically middling levels, while vehicle fees have remained near all-time lows since I-695 inadvisedly repealed the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET), the one progressive tax the Department of Revenue had in its arsenal. Plus, Gregoire estimates that her proposal would create as many as 5,500 jobs annually over 10 years, jobs that are desperately needed in our soft economy.

Where this goes in the legislature, though, remains to be seen:

"We can’t kick the can down the road and saddle our future generations with the repairs we failed to make," Gregoire is quoted in a press release. But of course, we can and we have, and given the Republican caucus's knee-jerk opposition to raising any tax, any time, there's no particular reason to be hopeful.