The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) is readying a $100 million program to add public electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in neighborhoods in four regions statewide, the Post-Gazette reports.
The effort is bankrolled 80 percent by federal tax dollars with private operators picking up the 20 percent balance. That rationale is that the preponderance of EV charging stations, many (if not most) publicly funded, primarily serve only long-distance travelers.
But such a program forces us, again, to ask a big “WHY?”
When gasoline-powered motor vehicles began to proliferate in the early 20th century, it was the oil companies, seeing the profit opportunity, who brought “filling stations” to the market (the first being a Gulf station in Pittsburgh in 1913).
It certainly was neither a function of government nor taxpayers then. And neither should be subsidizing charging stations for EVs now.
If EVs were the be-alls and end-alls that the usual suspect insist(ed) they are, either auto dealers or electric companies would have been, or should now be, falling all over themselves to establish a vast network of charging stations to rake in the profit.
That they did not speaks volumes to not only the fallacy that EVs are “the future” but that government command economics never works.
An astute pair of editorials were recently featured in the Tribune-Review and Post-Gazette on the need for great caution in state government granting this tax break and that tax break to the corporate behemoths proposing and/or now building artificial intelligence centers in Pennsylvania.
We prefer none.
Both editorials, in part, train the hairs of their scopes on the fact that AI projects will get a pass on the commonwealth’s 6 percent sales tax on many purchases but, incredibly, do not have to produce receipts.
Slick, eh?
From the Trib editorial:
“It’s an odd thing to justify.
“Qualifying data center developers can avoid Pennsylvania’s 6 percent sales tax on purchases related to building and maintaining their facilities, including expensive servers and equipment.
“The program previously capped that amount and operated it as a refund. That allowed clear accounting. It is now an uncapped exemption. It does not include a reporting requirement at the time of purchase.”
Which, we add, of course, is a recipe for abuse, if not outright fraud.
From the P-G editorial:
“In 2021, in an attempt to attract computing investments, the General Assembly voted to eliminate sales tax on products developers need to build or maintain their projects. The Shapiro administration now estimates that will cost the state $2 billion through 2031.” …
“[State] leaders need to exercise humility and seek balance — including remembering that this boom, like others through history, may become a bust. Data centers, including huge ones, will come. But there’s every reason for the commonwealth to enforce strict standards to protect its communities and environment, both of which will outlast the data center bonanza.
“Unless AI kills us all,” the P-G concludes.
Again, very rich and very profitable gigunda corporations want to or are building equally gargantuan data centers that, outside of construction, will employ very few but consume ginormous public resources.
Never should it be the time to throw billions of dollars in corporate wealthfare at these artificial intelligence data centers.
If there’s so vast a fortune to be had from them – economically and technologically –their owners need to make their money the old-fashioned way – by earning it.
There’s never an excuse to allow private enterprise to raid the public kitty for personal gain in the name of a dubious claim of public priority.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
