LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Infrastructure & Transportation Association (MITA) today urged the Legislature to reject a state gas tax holiday, warning that pulling hundreds of millions of dollars out of road funding would put the jobs of the men and women who build Michigan’s roads, and the families who depend on their paychecks, directly at risk.
Michigan’s fuel taxes fund roads. The Michigan Constitution dedicates them to transportation, and last year’s bipartisan road funding plan made the gas tax the backbone of how the state funds and fixes its roads and bridges. Estimates put the cost of a three-month holiday at roughly $600 million, and none of the proposals now circulating in Lansing offer a credible plan to replace it.
“Every dollar of the gas tax has a name and a face attached to it. It’s the equipment operator in Gaylord, the flagger in Kalamazoo, the truck driver in Saginaw and the laborer in Detroit who get up before dawn to make our roads safer,” said Rob Coppersmith, executive vice president of MITA. “Take $600 million out of road funding, and you’re not taking it from a spreadsheet. You’re taking it from their paychecks, their mortgages and their kids’ futures. A few weeks of savings at the pump is not worth putting Michigan families out of work.”
MITA members plan their work, hire their crews and invest in equipment based on the funding lawmakers commit to. A hole of this size would mean fewer projects put out to bid next spring, fewer workers hired and more crews sitting idle during a construction season Michigan can’t afford to waste.
“Our members made hiring and investment decisions because the Legislature finally made a serious, long-term commitment to our roads,” Coppersmith said. “That promise is less than a year old. Breaking it now for an election-season headline would tell every worker and every contractor in this state that road funding is only safe until it becomes politically inconvenient. Michigan drivers remember what that got us: crumbling roads, blown tires and bridges on the brink.”
Coppersmith noted that even after last year’s historic investment, Michigan still faces a road funding gap of more than $2 billion a year, and that stepping backward now would erase hard-won progress and set the state’s roads back for years.
“Nobody understands high prices better than the working families our members employ. They feel it every time they fill up,” Coppersmith said. “But real relief doesn’t come from gutting the very funding that keeps them on the job. We’re asking lawmakers to take the gas tax holiday off the table, protect the road funding they fought to pass and stand with the people who build Michigan’s critical infrastructure.”
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