Ending GAs-tax Funding of
Motorized Recreation

Toolkit for the Quiet Majority

This toolkit is designed to support local and legislative efforts to reform gas-tax funding of motorized recreation.

Is your property or special place threatened by the intrusive aspects of motorized recreation? Are you concerned about the increasing noise and accumulating damage to our state caused by motorized recreation?

Every time you buy gas in Minnesota you pay into dedicated accounts for snowmobiles, ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles, four-wheel drive trucks and motorboats. Minnesotans pay $15 million annually - 3% of the state's gas-tax - at the pump for motorized recreation and its unwanted effects.

It is MRR's goal to end diversion of state gas-tax revenue to motorized recreation. MRR legislation provides use-funding to mitigate the unwanted effects of motorized recreation.

LOCAL CITIZENS EMPOWERED

The good news is that funds for motorized recreation flow through local units of government which are supposed to act as fiscal agents to the snowmobile and ATV clubs they sponsor. Each year local governments must pass resolutions to continue this funding. This singular point of democracy in the state's gas-tax funded motorized recreation program provides citizens with an opportunity to amend or defeat these funding resolutions.

MRR's Toolkit for the Quiet Majority educates, equips and empowers citizens to audit local governments and the snowmobile and ATV clubs they sponsor and to amend local funding resolutions to implement MRR's Five Standards for Protecting Minnesota to the right. Where these reforms cannot be implemented, citizens may work to abolish public funding of motorized recreation.

TIME LIMITED AND HISTORIC LEGISLATIVE OPPORTUNITY

In early 2008 the Minnesota legislature will make changes in the state’s gas-tax for the first time in twenty-years. Proposals to increase the state’s gas-tax would increase public funding for motorized recreation because snowmobiles, ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles, four-wheel drive trucks and motorboats each get an annual percentage of the state gas-tax - 3%, ~$15 million. The DNR's Trails and Waterways Division is largely subsidized with gas-tax revenue and administers these "dedicated accounts".  ATV advocates want to double the amount diverted to the ATV account.

It is MRR’s 2008 legislative goal to redirect gas-tax
funding of motorized recreation to mitigate the noise, fumes, danger to others and environmental damage caused by these machines.   There is no better time to redirect gas-tax funds - currently being used to promote motorized recreation - to mitigate the unwanted effects of these machines.

MRR's campaign to reform gas-tax funding of motorized recreation has two fronts: our 2008 Roads no ruts! legislative campaign and our Citizen Audit campaign in St. Louis County.