California Assembly passes Senate bill upholding fees to pay for road maintenance

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(The Center Square) – Californians could pay more money towards their garbage collection bill to help pay for road maintenance if a senate bill is passed into law.

Senate Bill 922, authored by Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, would allow local governments to impose taxes and fees to help pay for road maintenance after heavy use by large and heavy services vehicles, like garbage trucks, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.

“Senate Bill 922 upholds local governments’ longstanding ability to recover the cost of street maintenance and repair caused by big service operations such as waste hauling,” Assemblymember Steve Bennett, D-Oxnard, said during presentation of the bill on the Assembly floor.

Local governments, which are responsible for taking care of most local streets and roads, often see deterioration from heavy-duty service vehicles, Bennett said on the Assembly floor on Thursday. That includes large trash and waste vehicles that regularly drive on local roads.

“For decades, it’s been a standard practice to integrate the cost repairing this damage into rates, fees and franchise agreements associated with providing those services,” Bennett said. “Cities, labor groups and the service providers themselves, like waste haulers, are in joint support of this effort.”

In a court case decided in June 2025, Rogers vs. City of Redlands, at issue was whether city taxpayer-funded garbage collection services could charge extra fees to customers to pay for maintenance and repair of roads. The presiding judge, Joseph T. Ortiz, decided in that case that those fees were legal, and Laird’s bill, which Bennett presented in the longtime senator’s stead on the Assembly floor on Thursday, clarifies the legality of those fees being charged.

However, not every lawmaker thought the bill would do what Bennett said it would do.

“The roads are crappy. We pay a high gas tax. Why aren’t the roads being fixed?” Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, said on the Assembly floor in opposition to the bill on Thursday. “With the amount of money we’re taking from California taxpayers in the name of fixing potholes, you’d think we’d have gold-plated streets by now.”

According to a 2025 report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, California taxpayers paid $3.71 billion for roads and streets in fiscal year 2025-26. That is up from $3.65 billion in 2024-25 and $3.5 billion in 2023-24. Much of that funding comes from the state’s gas tax, which rose to 63.4 cents a gallon on July 1. Under Senate Bill 1, which passed in 2017, the state is authorized to increase the gas tax on July 1 every year. As of Thursday, the average price of a gallon of gas in the state was $5.62, well over the national average of $4.06 a gallon.

“I appreciate the rhetorical flourishes we just had, but I would also point out that all of us would like to have the most efficient services possible from government,” Bennett said. “That’s what we should all be working to try to make sure we deliver.”

The bill passed the Assembly 46 to 12 on Thursday morning.