As a legislator and small business owner I was angry to learn that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy committed Connecticut to spend $300,000 to partially fund a federal highway study on whether it makes sense to charge motorists yet another tax, this one based on annual mileage driven. Instead of figuring out how to operate our state within existing income sources, the governor is seeking ways to implement new taxes without cancelling others. This is yet another example of the shortsighted thinking that comes from the governor’s office and the Democratic-controlled legislative leadership in Hartford.

Every time you give the state another source of revenue it gets squandered, government is expanded, new state employees are hired and state employee benefits become more expensive and problematic. In this last legislative session I successfully fought off an attempt in the insurance committee to add a 1 percent tax on your homeowner’s insurance policies. Its stated purpose was to pay for firefighter training schools but there was nothing in the bill language to stop future legislatures from increasing that tax to pay for any number of things to expand government.

This same concept is true for a mileage tax. At the point of passage it’s a certain dollar amount per mile to pay for the repair and maintenance of our state’s highways. Future legislatures could see this as an opportunity for increasing a revenue source that will further expand state government. We cannot let this happen.

The mileage tax is not a new idea; it’s just thought to be a crazy one. When the idea was first presented by the governor’s Transportation Finance Panel in 2015, it was panned by Democrats and Republicans alike. Roll the tape forward to today and I can tell you that my constituents find this concept downright appalling. One simple post on my Facebook page explaining the mileage tax has generated by far the largest number of shares, comments, and dislikes I have ever had. To them, it piles on to the litany of other taxes and regulations that make people and businesses want to leave the state. Interestingly, many are concerned about how this proposal would impact their privacy.

Participating states would pay roughly $1.49 million — about half the total estimated $2.98 million cost — with Connecticut’s $300,000 contribution being the largest, followed by Delaware and Pennsylvania. In a time when our state is broke, and our budget deficit continues to spiral out of control because of wasteful state spending and unrepentant borrowing by Malloy and majority party Democrats, I question why we’re spending this money and why Connecticut’s “share” of a 16-state study is larger than any other participating state.

Connecticut continues to slash and cut budgets for important social services, and for programs that offer a decisive return on investment that would actually increase state revenues, yet here we are handing out money for another scheme that would penalize hard-working residents.

Just weeks ago, in yet another broken promise to our tourism industry, Malloy cut $1.1 million from Connecticut’s three tourism districts, essentially putting them out of business. The Eastern Connecticut Tourism District, like the other two, provided valuable resources and support to an innumerable population of small businesses in the region that will suffer with this loss. The $300,000 spent on a terrible taxation study would have gone a long way towards saving one of the tourism districts, all of which have proven to generate three to six times their cost in tax revenue.

Republicans have repeatedly advocated for making targeted cuts to programs in order to balance the state budget. However, our budget plan would have consolidated funding and established a $3.3 million competitive grant that the three tourism districts, and many other businesses, could have applied for. Instead of blanket cuts, our budget would support the programs that help the state and eliminate those that duplicate services or are unsustainable.

So, $300,000 to study an unpopular tax or $300,000 to support an entity that brings in revenue upwards of six times the cost from people visiting our state; what would you have spent the money on? My money would have been on supporting tourism.

John Scott, a Republican, represents the 40th House District covering Groton and Ledyard.