Traffic jams up the Zakim Bridge and other points north on an August afternoon. (Photo by Andy Metzger)

IT WAS Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the Boston-born associate justice of the Supreme Court, who wrote in 1927 that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

When it comes to the state gas tax, this is the price we pay to ensure that we have safe and reliable ways to get where we need to go, with sufficient funding to build, operate, and maintain the essential transportation infrastructure we all depend upon.

The current political environment, which has the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor proposing to leave at least $120 million (and probably more) on the table in order to gain political points, is a remarkable abdication of that principle and an example of how presumed short-term political gain will lead to long-term transportation pain.

On Monday, Republican nominee Mike Minogue proposed suspending the gas tax any time the price of fuel exceeds $4 per gallon and working toward eliminating the levy altogether. Democratic incumbent Maura Healey, seemingly concerned about not keeping pace with her challenger amid a campaign season being defined, here and nationally, by “affordability,” has now proposed suspending the gas tax for two months. Both candidates are doing the public a disservice.

You can’t drive a car without heavy and continuous public investment in roads and bridges – building them, maintaining them, policing them, plowing them. The state’s 24-cent-per-gallon gas tax is an essential source of funding for those investments, though it does not come close to covering the full costs of driving in Massachusetts, including the public health costs associated with dangerous particulate emissions.

The state relies on three main sources of funding for transportation needs: the sales tax on the purchase of vehicles, automobile registration and inspection fees, and the state gas tax. Over the last four years, so-called Fair Share, or millionaires tax, revenues have also supported transportation needs. Depending on the year, collections from the gas tax are either the largest or second-largest source of state-generated transportation revenue.

The gas tax is a rough form of a user fee. It has, since the first days of the automobile era in the last century, been the foundation of how state transportation infrastructure gets built and maintained. States rely on gas tax revenues for both pay-as-you-go transportation projects as well as for the payment of principal and interest on transportation bonds issued for large capital projects.

The state gas tax helps pay for the roads our ambulances and EMTs and firefighters use to save lives. It helps pay for the road system that enables fulfillment of our everyday needs, whether getting to school or work or a doctor’s appointment, or a visit to a friend. It pays, in short, for the very things that help establish and improve our quality of life.

At a time when our transportation system is suffering from chronic and worsening traffic congestion, when the public transportation system is undergoing a massive and long overdue rehabilitation of its system, and when federal dollars for projects across the board are being held back or clawed back by the Trump administration, deliberately reducing state revenue by roughly $120 million (the Healey administration’s estimate) or more seems profoundly inadvisable and wrongheaded.

The administration has proposed using “surplus” millionaires tax revenue to make up for the lost gas tax revenue, but this is a classic example of robbing Peter to pay Paul, as it means some other worthy public need will go unfunded.

Suspending the state gas tax for two months might save the average driver about $25, barely enough to respond meaningfully to current gas prices and other inflationary pressures. The benefits would be miniscule; the downsides would be enormous.

First, the actual loss might be in excess of $120 million. The gas tax is actually paid by wholesalers on a monthly basis (your payment at the pump reimburses them). Wholesalers are likely to load up on gasoline during any suspension period in order to benefit from more sales, and that could mean state revenue losses in excess of the projected $120 million.

Second, this is sending the wrong message to Massachusetts drivers. By making the gas tax seem something that is optional or not critical to our transportation needs, both candidates are undermining the very foundation of state transportation funding, making it harder in the future to gain public trust for revenue initiatives of any type.

Third, any Fair Share “surplus” is not net new money. It is money that should be used as it was intended, to pay for specific and growing transportation infrastructure needs. Shifting money from one account to another is not finding a way to pay for this proposed suspension; it is a shell game.

Finally, economists who have studied these types of gas tax suspension proposals estimate that drivers only receive about 72 percent of the benefit, with the rest going right back to the suppliers. So the actual benefit to drivers will be much less than most people probably expect.

Massachusetts needs to invest in its residents, in order to promote the public good and public safety. That doesn’t happen at no cost. Tossing away $120 million in vital funding to score election year points is not the answer to rising gas prices.

Losing $120 million (or more) is like losing almost the entire amount of money the MBTA has to pay every year for the RIDE paratransit services. It is close to the amount of money that the state uses to fund the regional transit authorities (about $97 million). It’s like losing roughly half of the money the state collects in tolls on the Metro Highway System.

We should instead invest in policies that could help alleviate traffic congestion and improve access and improve air quality. Massachusetts should be making it easier for people to choose not to drive, or drive less, by spending more money on building a transformational regional rail system.

Massachusetts should be making it easier for drivers to transition to electric vehicles, but we remain a laggard in making the investments that were facilitated by the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. As reported in Commonwealth Beacon this June, despite receiving a $64 million federal grant four years ago, Massachusetts hasn’t built a single electric charging station in accordance with the federal National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program.

Over eight years since the Commission on the Future of Transportation said that we must “move more people in fewer vehicles,” Massachusetts is pushing more people to drive more, congesting roads more, polluting more. Political stunts like those being proposed by the two leading candidates for governor do nothing to address this trend and aren’t serving our best interests. Instead, they are undermining public understanding and support for investing in our common and shared futures.

In the effort to navigate through the consequences of an ill-advised war in Iran, political leaders need to collectively rise to the occasion. The response to the pain at the pump shouldn’t cause more pain by reducing revenues necessary to keep investing in the infrastructure we all depend on.

Political leaders of both parties should not be undermining the importance and value of the gas tax. Like any tax, it is unpopular, but it is one of the main engines fueling our transportation system and, through that, fueling our economy.

It would be foolhardy and shortsighted to decide that the best way to help people who are feeling pain at the pump is to deliberately disinvest in the very systems they rely on for everyday necessities.

James Aloisi is a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation.