By O. Kay Henderson (Radio Iowa)

The ongoing debate at the statehouse over how to cut property taxes includes a discussion of the gas tax.

A Senate-passed property tax bill includes a mechanism to automatically trigger yearly increases in the gas tax. During a House subcommittee hearing yesterday, Scott Newhard, vice president of the Associated General Contractors of Iowa, said while the proposal ties those increases to an inflation factor, there’d be a penny per year limit and most annual increases would be a fraction of a cent.

“If this had been done a year ago, it would have increased the gas tax last July six-tenths of one penny,” Newhard said. “…A driver, for instance, of an 18 gallon vehicle would have seen an increase had it been in effect last year of 11 cents at the fill up.The average driver probably fills up 30 times a year. That’s $3.30 (a year) to go for the costs of building and maintaining Iowa’s highway infrastructure.”

Tyler Raygor is state director for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that opposes triggering a gas tax increase. “We’re staring down the barrel of the third highest gas prices in human history and we’re seriously having a conversion about putting the gas tax on autopilot and raising it on Iowans? We just don’t think that makes sense,” Raygor said during the hour-long hearing.

Nick Laning, a lobbyist for Truck Stops of Iowa, which represents diesel fuel retailers, delivered the same message to the House subcommittee.  “While other states are pausing their gas taxes or trying to give relief why are we considering an increase in the gas tax in this current economic environment nationally and internationally?” Laning asked

The state tax on diesel is 32.5 cents a gallon and it’s 30 cents a gallon on gasoline. Those tax rates were set in 2015.