Juneau -- Fairbanks Republican Senator Gary Wilken announced today that he will move to fix financial inequities existing in current law by offering an amendment to House Bill 73. HB 73 seeks to correct technical problems with a measure that was signed into law last year.

Last spring, in an effort to reduce the Division of Motor Vehicle's workload and increase efficiency, lawmakers passed House Bill 404, which eliminated yearly registration requirements for commercial trailers. HB 404 also instituted a one-time lifetime registration fee of $10. That compares to the previous registration fee which ranged from $51 to $321 a year, based on the size of the trailer.

"The burden of making up approximately $1.8 million in lost state revenues was shifted from commercial trailers to commercial vehicles in all weight classes through increased registration fees-whether those vehicles pulled a trailer or not," said Senator Wilken.

Wilken's amendment removes smaller commercial vehicles from this increased fee structure and shifts the increased cost to larger commercial vehicles that are the most likely to pull commercial trailers. Wilken says his intention in offering this change is to protect the small businessperson who will never pull a commercial trailer, and are unlikely to ever benefit from the new lifetime registration for commercial trailers.

"I don't see the fairness behind charging the guy driving a 1/2 ton commercial pick-up an additional 56% for his registration so that 40 foot semi-trailer owners can reduce their costs by 96%," said Senator Wilken. "Those that benefit from this new lifetime licensure should be the same ones that make up for decreased General Fund revenues. The only fair way this can be done is to increase registration fees for larger commercial vehicles proportional to the amount of savings they will enjoy by not having to register their trailer each year."

The Senate will vote on this amendment when the bill comes up for a vote on March 24th.

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