Wisconsin is a particularly significant test case for considering alternatives to the excise tax on fuel, especially considering the proposal that emerged in the days after Gov. Scott Walker won re-election.

Walker, in interviews before the election, pitched his vision for a new way to fund infrastructure, one that could do away with the excise tax on gas and replace with a sales tax. As a prospective candidate for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination, Walker will be under close scrutiny for the next two years of his governorship for hints of future policy positions.

“The gas tax itself — we’re too dependent on primarily that source,” Walker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Increasingly as cars and vehicles become more fuel efficient [and] the gallons of gas purchased go down, the gas tax collections go down, even though those vehicles put the same wear and tear if not more on the roads out there.”

Walker has said, however, he will change the original plan by Mark Gottlieb, his Transportation secretary, which calls for $751 million in added taxes and fees over two years

— David Harrison