AUGUSTA — Fed up with paying Maine Turnpike tolls? So is state Sen. Eric Brakey, and he’s only been commuting to Augusta for a month now.

Brakey, an Auburn Republican, along with a bipartisan group of supporters, including state Rep. Jared Golden, D-Lewiston, is hoping to sell the Legislature on state income tax credit for all turnpike users. 

Brakey said the tolls drivers pay are a “double tax” because drivers already pay a gas tax that pays to build and maintain all of the state’s other roads and interstates.

“A big problem occurs with this system,” Brakey told members of the Legislature’s Taxation Committee earlier this week. “When Maine drivers pay their user fee — tolls — for using the turnpike, they are also burning gasoline they’ve paid non-turnpike user fees for — gas taxes. Maine drivers are paying twice for every mile they drive on the turnpike.”

Brakey’s bill, LD 120, was heard Wednesday by the committee and he said it seemed to go over well. And it’s helpful that state Sen. Nathan Libby, D-Lewiston, and state Rep. Bruce Bickford, R-Auburn, are committee members.

“The whole goal of it is, if there is going to be a premium on taking the turnpike, all right,” Brakey said. “But at least, let’s find a way to eliminate or offset the double tax people are paying.”

As it stands, the bill would provide a full rebate for all tolls paid on the turnpike by Maine income tax filers.

While the measure would be applied to all who pay turnpike tolls, those tolls and the amount of them have long been a sticking point for Lewiston-Auburn residents who say they pay more than others and have fewer alternatives.

Brakey said the cash tolls for a round trip to Portland from Lewiston or Auburn are $5.50. From Biddeford to Portland, a similar distance, the tolls are $3. He noted a round trip on Interstate 295 from Brunswick to Portland has no tolls.

The tolls run counter to economic development efforts in Lewiston-Auburn, Brakey said. All of Maine’s other major cities have free interstate alternatives to the turnpike that allow them to move goods and people without tolls, he said.

“Here we are trying to grow our economy and our businesses and yet if you are going north or south, you can get on I-295 and go around Lewiston and Auburn to avoid the tolls,” Brakey said. “We are literally penalizing people to come to Lewiston and Auburn and are asking people to divert right around it because of the tolls.”

The bill could cost the state as much as $4 million a year in reimbursed income tax revenue, but Brakey said a number of amendments were in the works and the final numbers on the bill could change.

The Taxation Committee is expected to take up the measure in about two weeks, when it will be amended and the committee will vote on a recommendation to the full Legislature.

Golden, the Lewiston Democrat, said his constituents have long felt the turnpike’s tolling structure was unfair.

Officials from the Maine Turnpike Authority testified on technical aspects of the bill and on how much it could cost the state but stayed neutral, offering testimony that was neither in support nor in opposition.

sthistle@sunjournal.com