Greene considers $5 vehicle fee
WAYNESBURG – Drivers who register their vehicles in Greene County could be paying an additional $5 each year.
The Greene County commissioners will consider approval of a $5 vehicle registration fee for local transportation projects, which is permitted under the state’s Act 89 transportation funding law passed in 2013.
The additional revenue could help make up for the loss of state funding for local bridges, the commissioners said. The county published a legal advertisement Sunday indicating it will consider the ordinance at the March 17 voting meeting.
Commissioners Blair Zimmerman and Archie Trader said Monday additional revenue from the fee could help make up for the loss of Act 26 funding for county bridges.
“We have the option to us, but (whether the board will adopt the fee) we don’t know that yet,” Trader said. “We won’t know until we have the public meeting.”
Act 89, which provided funding for state highway projects through the removal of the cap on the Oil Company Franchise Tax, also gave counties the ability to impose a $5 registration fee on vehicles for local highway projects. The current registration fee is $36.
Greene County is estimated to have about 38,000 registered vehicles, Chief Clerk Jeff Marshall said. The $5 fee would bring in about $190,000.
The county is completing rehabilitation of its last bridge under which it can receive funding from Act 26, Marshall said. Act 26 provided money to cover the county’s 20 percent match for state and federal funding of bridge projects.
The county became ineligible for the funding about two years ago when its unemployment rate fell below a certain level, Marshall said. The act subsequently expired.
The county has 86 bridges it maintains. It normally spends about $1 million for engineering, construction and inspection for each bridge project, Marshall said. With the loss of Act 26 money, the county will have to contribute about $200,000 for each project, he said.
“The 20 percent we lost on bridges can be a big sum of money,” Zimmerman said. “This is not going to cover our costs, but it’s going to help,” Trader added.
If the commissioners adopt the ordinance at their March meeting, the ordinance will go into effect June 30.
The state Department of Transportation will collect the $5 fee as part of its normal registration process and then distribute the money to counties that impose the fee in June and December each year.
So far, about eight counties, including Allegheny, have opted to impose the fee