Just when you thought it was safe to get back on the road in California, the once-and-former Golden State is considering taxing your travel. The state, pushing electric vehicles, is now worried about the loss of gasoline tax revenue — and is testing a program to tax drivers per mile traveled.

Yes, really.

California, which relies on gas tax and other fuel tax revenues to support its roadway maintenance, is piloting the idea of a "road charge," which would charge drivers based on the number of miles they drive rather than how much gas they purchase. The pilot program was initiated due to the fact that the collection of gas tax revenue is estimated to decrease in the coming years, according to the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA). 

CalSTA officials told FOX Business that a bill, signed in 2021, established the pilot program to test the potential feasibility of alternative ways they can pay to maintain the state’s roads, which the agency said could even "show a net savings for some motorists under certain circumstances."

Notice the wiggle-wording there: The alternative taxation schemes could even show net savings for some motorists under certain circumstances.

Color me skeptical. While we're at it, color me skeptical about the next part:

Participation in the program is completely optional, though participants can earn up to $400 in incentives for helping the agency test this system. Participants will experience paying different road charge rates, and in turn provide feedback to the state about their experience, according to the agency. To report their mileage, they will be able to choose between manual odometer entry, an onboard plug-in device with or without GPS, or in-vehicle telematics without GPS.

Participation in the program may be completely optional now, but today's optional is tomorrow's mandatory, and the state of California has shown itself to be addicted to taxing its residents, in any way possible.

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California is, yes, facing revenue issues. Governor Newsom has managed to take a state with a healthy surplus and turned it into a multi-billion dollar deficit. And California's roads are a disaster. 

But more taxes aren't the answer, and taxing travel — a right protected by the Constitution — certainly isn't the answer. California's financial problems certainly are not caused by them not taxing people enough, despite what the impeccably coiffed Gavin Newsom may have to say about it. And this tax, a travel tax in a state where people commute from the Central Valley to Silicon Valley to take grocery checkout jobs, will land hardest on the people least able to bear the cost. In 2017, while working in Silicon Valley, I spoke personally to a young man who was driving from Modesto to Los Gatos, a 90+ mile drive, to work at the Ralph's grocery store in the latter town. These people may well have their livelihoods ripped away by this tax.

California's financial problems can't be solved with more taxes. The only way the formerly Golden State will turn this around is to cease driving away all their productive residents; to change the state's functional assumptions, encourage business, and entrepreneurship, lower taxes, reduce regulations, to make California a place where the business climate matches the climate outdoors.

Then, and only then, will California resurface from the fiscal mess it's in now.