The analysis provided by the Texas Comptroller’s office showed that the additional fees would apply to around 300,000 vehicles in the fiscal year 2022 and the implementation of the extra fees would raise $37.8 million starting in 2022. The table below shows how much money the bill could raise from 2021 through 2026 if passed.
Contact Your Texas Leaders
The Tesla Owners Club of Austin pointed out that this is a great time to contact your Texas legislators again as well as members of the House Transportation Committee and ask them to vote against SB 1728. If you are not sure what to say, you can simply say this:
“Voting no on SB 1728 is voting FOR thriving jobs as well as clean trucks and cars made in Texas!”
EV owners shouldn’t have to pay unreasonable taxes, and they already contribute to the state revenues today through registration fees, tolls, and taxes on the electricity that they use. This new bill proposes much higher fees for EV drivers than what an efficient ICE vehicle owner would pay at the pump in taxes. Perhaps a carbon tax would be a fairer alternative. Taxing companies and products that pollute the air is a great start. However, the politicians who are funded by big oil and fossil fuels may lose their funding if they even breathe the words “carbon tax.” So, that is not moving forward at the moment.
To contact or find your legislators, click here.
The bill, if passed into state law, will go into effect on September 1, 2021.
Who Is Pushing SB 1728?
The bill is sponsored by Senators Charles Schwertner (R), Robert Nichols (R), and Beverly Powell (D). Senator Schwertner is a physician, Senator Nichols is an engineer in the plastics manufacturing industry but also serves as the Chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, and Senator Powell noted in her bio that she works in real estate.
I was also informed by the Tesla Owners Club of Austin that there’s another organization that is heavily pushing this bill. They received this information from a confidential, unnamed source. That organization is called Texas Infrastructure Now.
Texas Infrastructure Now’s website shared a list of coalition members that are in support of something. The bill itself isn’t listed The webpage simply says, “Coalition Members supporting a constitutional amendment for increased state funding for transportation.” There’s also a link that leads to an empty-ish webpage encouraging the visitor to show their support. I say empty-ish because it still has the header and footer, which shares the organization’s goal (that footer is on many webpages.) When I clicked on their “learn more” link, it took me to a contact form.
It should be noted that at the very bottom of the website, it says, “Pol. adv. paid for by Texas Infrastructure Now PAC,” which, according to Transparency USA, is dissolved. Odd that a dissolved organization is paying for political advertising. In the image below, I blurred out the treasurer’s name and the address of the organization.
I couldn’t find much about this organization other than a couple of Facebook posts — but no reference to the bill itself. I do find it odd that the organization didn’t mention the bill on its website. If I was trying to rally the support of a constitutional amendment, I’d have all of the information available.
Conclusion
The fact that some lawmakers in our nation are so hellbent on blocking progress on climate and clean energy should disturb you. Why are they so against it? Why create these extreme fees for electric vehicle drivers? Do they not realize that if they push these inane laws that they would discourage people from switching from ICE to electric? Or is that the sole point?
Instead of pushing the idea of the wealthy EV owner not paying taxes, how about we push the idea of the wealthy fossil fuel industry not paying taxes. I like what Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, said earlier today and agree with him that we need a carbon tax. Imagine if we taxed Exxon and all of the others a percentage on all of the carbon that is pumped into the air. These companies would then be forced to find innovative ways to produce without polluting.