ALBANY, N.Y. -- "I'm traveling from Vermont. I've been over to Rochester Institute of Technology to visit my daughter. I'm on my way back to Boston," said George Blakeslee at a thruway rest stop.
It's travel that makes Blakeslee wonder why he's paying almost $4 a gallon in New York.
"I don't understand oil prices and how it changes so fast at the pump. It doesn't quite make sense to me," Blakeslee said.
This as Assembly Minority leader Jim Tedisco calls for a state gas tax cut for the summer of 32 cents.
"If you give the constituents lower sales tax, they'll pay less per gallon," said Tedisco, who has a petition on his website, www.tediscostake.com.
We've been hearing the debate over whether state leaders should repeal part of the state gas tax during the summer. Now our Steve Ference speaks with a leading advocate and a leading economic expert who have different takes on the issue and he asks some questions you might have been wondering as well.
It sounds simple enough, but some democrats say gas companies will soak up any consumer savings by simply raising prices. But if that's true, then why wouldn't nearby lower tax states already have gas that's just as expensive as New York's?
Blakeslee said, "It'll jump 20 cents just coming from one state to another. I think it's 15 cents difference between here and Vermont and Massachusetts."
Think about this. The average price of gas in Albany is $3.87. Meanwhile the average price of gas in Massachusetts is $3.70 -- a difference of 17 cents, which happens to be the difference in state taxes.
"We don't believe those individuals who say we're the only state in the nation that gets gouged if we eliminate taxes," said Tedisco.
Courtesy gasbuddy.com
If you take a look at a national map of gas prices by county from Gasbuddy.com, you'll see something else quite interesting. The more red the county, the pricier the gas. You can almost draw state boundaries by how much you're paying at the pump.
"The gas tax is certainly one of the reasons gas is as expensive as it is," said Manhattan Institute's Max Schulz.
Schulz says a tax holiday wouldn't hurt state revenues if legislators cut spending. And he doesn't believe gas companies would eat up any savings. But he doesn't like the holiday part.
"I think it would be wise if the legislature took steps to make permanent gas tax relief. New York pays some of the highest gasoline taxes, prices in the country," said Shulz.
"Perhaps rather than a gas tax holiday, we ought to look at those profits and see whether they get benefits they don't need any more with the price so high," said Blakeslee.
For now, New York's gas tax is a part of the overall state tax burden leaving many drivers mad and Schulz fearing it'll keep driving people away from a state many are finding too expensive to stay in.