Suspending gas tax not thought out

This election year is becoming the year in which "leadership incompetence" is demonstrated by politicians who insult voters' intelligence with meritless, even harmful, proposals to garner votes in the upcoming elections. Witness Republican Assemblyman James Hayes' May 7, 2008, Amherst Bee article proposing to suspend New York's tax on gas during the summer months. Assemblyman Hayes follows the lead of State Senate Republicans who, on April 30, 2008, called for a summer gas tax holiday. They follow the lead of Republican presidential candidate John Mc- Cain and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who proposed a federal gas tax holiday.

Assemblyman Hayes and his gas-tax-holiday friends ignore the reality that the gas tax revenues are dedicated sources of money to build, maintain and rebuild our highways. That building, maintenance and rebuilding create good construction jobs for Americans. The State Senate Republicans propose to fund highways through other sources, but that simply means that what you are not taxed at the pump you will be taxed elsewhere. It is cheap shell-game politics.

Assemblyman Hayes, in his many terms in the Assembly, has failed to propose any plan to move us away from oil dependency and to alternative, non-food-based, alternatives for our energy sources. Worse yet, his gas-tax-holiday proposal creates an incentive that increases, not decreases, our dependence on oil. His proposal has no consumer protection for the price-per-gallon of gas that we will have to pay at the pump this summer; rather, the holiday creates an opportunity for the rich oil companies to raise the price per gallon of gas to higher levels yet, resulting in little, if any, consumer savings. New York cannot afford such incompetency in leadership. Let's use this November election to elect some competent leaders to state and national offices.
Jerry Schad
Meadowview Lane
Amherst