LANSING (WWJ) - A lawmaker from Macomb County is not at all a fan of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's proposed 45-cents a-gallon gas tax hike.
Republican State Senator Peter Lucido of Shelby Township spoke live on WWJ Newsradio 950 Tuesday, shortly after Whitmer pitched her first budget -- which includes details on how she suggests paying for badly-needed road repairs in the state.
Clearly fired up about the issue, he called Whitmer's plan "insane."
"Why didn't this come out when she was running for governor? Why didn't she make it a point to say: 'And incidentally, I'm going to tax you 45 cents 'cause that's my plan.' Would that have made voters think twice about voting for her?" Lucido asked.
"I mean, she said she has a plan a plan to fix the damn roads. If it was just taxes, that's not even a way of doing it," Lucido added, citing a number of reasons why he believes Whitmer's plan won't work.
One of them, he said: "With the autonomous vehicles around the corner -- and the fact that we have natural gas vehicles, electric vehicles, battery-operated vehicles -- that tax is unsustainable to fund the roads over time, because we're gonna have these other alternative energy vehicles on the roads which won't be paying a gas tax," he said. "In fact, I'll go buy one tomorrow to avoid 45 cents a-gallon."
In reality, Lucido won't be needing to go new car shopping anytime soon, as Whitmer's plan will be a tough sell to the Republican-controlled legislature.
Meanwhile, Lucido said he has a much better plan to raise the money.
"Keep the registration money exclusively in the county in which the vehicle is registered and you will have more money," he said. "Because that's where the money should stay, where the vehicles are pounding the roads."
Lucido says 7 million vehicles are registered across the state, with more than 4.5 million of them concentrated in Metro Detroit.
"You're becoming a donor county in the tri-county area by giving away 66 cents of every dollar we take in," he said. "And it's given away to Up North and the other communities, and that's not where the roads are the worst. The worst roads are in tri-county -- Wayne, Oakland, Macomb. It's becasuse of the truck traffic; it's because of all the vehicles are registered."
Defending her plan to nearly triple the gas tax, Whitmer said it's a difficult but necessary move.
"We are a state at the crossroads," she said. "If we choose to continue down the path that we're on, our roads are going to get much worse and it's going to cost more to fix them."
If the governor's proposed plan is approved, Michigan would have by far the highest fuel taxes in the country.
MORE: Gov. Whitmer Proposes First Budget, Defends 45-Cent Gas Tax Hike