Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

House Speaker Tom Craddick

AUSTIN - House Speaker Tom Craddick said Tuesday that he supports tying the state tax on gasoline to the rate of inflation, saying that the 20 cents-a-gallon rate in place since 1991 is not keeping up with the cost of road building.

"I support it fully," Craddick, R-Midland, told reporters after the daily floor session. "I don't know what we're going to look at, but I do support doing some type of inflationary index."

State Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said he is considering filing legislation that would give Texas its first gasoline tax increase since Ann Richards was governor. But first, Krusee said, he wants to get comments from rank-and-file House members who might be reluctant to be seen as dipping into taxpayers' wallets.

"We're really not talking about a tax increase in the traditional sense," Krusee said. "I mean, right now, if the price of a suit goes up, the tax goes up because it's based on a percentage of the sales price. The tax didn't go up because we voted to raise taxes."

Leaders in Texas and other states that tie the gas tax to highway construction and maintenance are grappling with ways to meet the demand to ease traffic congestion.

Each year, the number of cars cruising the nation's highways increases, and each year the fleet becomes more and more fuel-efficient, officials said.

"That old car of yours that gets 12 miles a gallon and the new hybrids coming out that are supposed to get 60 miles a gallon both use the same amount of highway space," said Ric Williamson, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission. "But you're paying a whole lot more in gasoline taxes than that guy in the hybrid."

Williamson, a former state representative from Weatherford, said it would be inappropriate for the commission to lobby lawmakers to raise taxes. But he acknowledged that Texas is having difficulty in keeping up with the cost of road construction and maintenance.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Texas Senate, said the idea of generating more money from the gas tax is worth discussing.

"We've got continuing challenges to put more money into our highways," Dewhurst said. "We'll take a look at it over here in the Senate."

Dewhurst's predecessor, Republican Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant, said boosting the tax that sends all of its revenue to transportation, public safety and education, might not be as tough a sell as it seems. As a state senator in 1991, Ratliff supported the last gas tax hike and proposed another one that went nowhere a decade later.

"Bob Bullock used to kid me about being the only Republican senator to vote for the last gas tax increase in '91," Ratliff said of the former lieutenant governor. "Everybody says you can't vote for a tax increase. But in all of the years since then, I've never had a constituent mention it to me."