SACRAMENTO — California's gasoline price, a slave in recent years to fluctuations in crude oil markets and bottlenecks at the nation's refineries, on Wednesday is going a nickel-a-gallon higher.
But this time neither flighty markets nor overburdened refineries will shoulder the blame. We did it to ourselves.
The increase comes from a voter decision June 5 to approve Proposition 111, a ballot measure that triggered a 9-cent-per-gallon hike in gasoline taxes. Five cents of that increase will go into effect Wednesday. The rest of the increase will be phased in over the next four years with 1-cent tax hikes becoming effective every Jan. 1.
To those who harbor hopes that petroleum retailers or wholesalers will soften the financial blow by absorbing some or all of the increase, the answer from gasoline dealers is emphatic.
"No way," said John DeWitt, owner of J. E. DeWitt Inc., a gasoline wholesaler in South El Monte who also owns some retail stations. "The delivery costs from the refinery to the station, trucking costs and overhead, so many government rules, regulations and fees make that impossible."
Jim Gigoux, executive director of the California Independent Oil Marketers Assn., said a few stations may introduce the tax hike gradually but "you can bet in a very short time everybody's going to be up 5 cents a gallon."
So on Wednesday most California motorists will see new prices at their corner gas stations. Where the night before self-serve unleaded gas may have sold for $1.08 a gallon, or regular for a bargain 99 cents a gallon, prices will be $1.13 for unleaded and $1.04 for regular.
"You tell me one other industry that has it prices out there in three-foot-high letters on the street," complained Gigoux. "People complain about $1 a gallon for gasoline but they think nothing of going into the grocery and spending a lot more than that for water in a fancy bottle."
The tax hike was designed by the Legislature and Gov. George Deukmejian to help finance a 10-year, $18.5-billion transportation program that they hope will ease traffic congestion, repair crumbling highways and bridges and provide better access to rail transit.
For consumers, it means the total federal and state taxes paid on a gallon of gasoline in California will be about 30 cents.
