By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Slim prospects that Congress will raise the federal gas tax could make a pitch for a state fuel tax increase more likely, a member of a special panel looking for new ways to fund state highway improvements said today.

But the need for more road money will not make raising taxes any less difficult, said Mark Lamberth, a member of the Arkansas Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Finance.

U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., and Mark Sullivan, a senior advisor with the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Innovative Program Delivery, briefed the committee today on federal highway funds.

Snyder said Congress likely won’t raise the federal gasoline tax anytime soon, and he said it may be another 18 months before lawmakers take any action on the federal highway bill because President Obama wants the time to try and fix the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is running low because of declining revenues from fuel taxes.

“We may be on the precipice of significant changes in the federal program,” Sullivan told the panel.

Within the past year, Congress has pumped $15 billion into the highway fund to keep it solvent, Snyder said. Obama wants lawmakers to delay reauthorization of the highway bill, set to expire at the end of September, for 18 months so a solution to the financially struggling highway fund can be found, he said.

The congressman said the fund is losing money because demands for highway projects are up, while the funding source is declining because motorists are traveling less and driving more fuel-efficient vehicles.

State Sen. Paul Miller, D-Melbourne, said the committee needs to make some tough decisions on recommendations to fund highway projects in Arkansas because it’s becoming more difficult to depend on federal funds.

“It’s time to fish or cut bait,” Miller said.

Lamberth said after the meeting it was good to know that no hike in the federal gas tax is expected any time soon, because that makes a hike in the state fuel tax a possibility.

However, he acknowledged any tax hike would be hard for Arkansas voters to swallow.

“That’s always an option,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult to raise taxes anytime.”

Sen. John Paul Capps, D-Searcy, the committee chairman, asked the panel’s two subcommittees — one is looking at possible new funding and the other at ways to tap existing revenue streams — the morning of Sept. 16. The full panel meets that afternoon.

Earlier this year, at the committee’s first meeting, state Highway Director Dan Flowers told the panel that the state fuel tax has been a flat source of revenue and that the state is seeing a decline in that stream. He also said Arkansas highways would need $200 million more annually just to maintain current conditions.