Taxing the Dedicated Environmentalists

The State of Oregon is looking for ways to enhance their revenue from highway taxes, and someone up there has figured out that hybrid cars pay less gas taxes than standard internal combustion engine vehicles. Well, we can't have that! Brendan Miniter writes about it today in the Wall Street Journal:

Soak the Green
Oregon mulls a new tax that environmentalists and privacy advocates will hate.

As gas prices continue to top $2 a gallon, all those drivers of fuel-efficient cars may not have reason to gloat for much longer. Oregon is worried that too many Honda Insights and Toyota Priuses hitting the roads will rob it of the cash it expects out of its 24-cent-a-gallon tax. So the Beaver State is studying ways to ensure that "hybrid" car owners pay their "fair share" of taxes for the miles they drive. That means allowing the taxman to catch up to hybrid owners just as often as he catches up to gas guzzling SUV drivers. And if Oregon goes ahead, it won't be long before other states follow.

Oregon won't complete its study until 2007. But it's already clear the state is looking to influence behavior in addition to raising revenue by implementing a "vehicle mileage tax." Under a VMT a motorist would pay a tax for each mile driven, probably around 1.25 cents. To administer this tax, a global positioning system would be mounted in each car. As a driver fuels up, the device would relay mileage information to the gas pump, which would calculate the VMT. A simple electronic odometer-reading device would do the trick, but Oregon is looking at GPS devices because they would also allow for charging higher VMT rates for miles driven in "congested" areas during rush hour or to exempt miles driven out of state.

I can't believe this type of law could survive the inevitable court challenges. All of those people who keep finding a right to privacy in the constitution (a right that isn't actually there) surely will consider this a grievous violation of that "right". I don't think the courts will be too fond of a system designed to track and monitor the free movement of Americans who haven't been charged with anything other than driving their cars. What's next - ankle bracelet transponders for joggers?