Last year, members of the Washington State Transportation Commission ran a pay-per-mile pilot program. The program tested several options, including a GPS-enabled transponder attached to your car and a mileage reporting app for your phone. I was a pilot participant and tested both tracking methods.

For me, the pilot was simple but shocking. My driving was graded based on acceleration, speed, braking, and cornering. During a one-hour trip, the transponder reported every time I exceeded 60 mph – and for how long and where. It also tagged me for “harsh cornering.” The commission calls this a “value added feature.”

It isn’t hard to picture how this information could easily be used to issue scores of traffic tickets.

The commissioners will make their recommendations about imposing a mileage tax to the state Legislature in December.

There are problems. The state has bond-obligation debt tied to gas tax revenue. So, what is likely to happen is the public will end up with both taxes on the books.

Officials promise the gas tax we pay will be credited back to us on mileage tax bills, but as we witnessed last session, legislative promises are often broken, rendering them meaningless.

The commission also likely will recommend that any per-mile charge should be constitutionally protected by the state’s 18th amendment, which restricts money drivers pay for highways and bridges only, making it a user fee. The gas tax cannot be used to fund transit or other government programs.

However, the commission also knows that this contradicts what powerful state public agencies say they want, which is the ability for transportation dollars to go into an unprotected, general pool of money that public officials can spend on mass transit, road diets, and other ideological initiatives.

For the driving public, the hardest pill to swallow might be the violation of privacy, with either the state or a contractor tracking where you go and how often, and when and where you drive. The natural proclivity of government is to store and use private data once it’s collected. The commission says that personal information cannot be disclosed without consent or knowledge unless required or permitted by law. The problem is, no one believes it.

To make this proposal even more unpalatable, officials envision a mileage tax that they could increase based on time of day and driver location, taking more money during the busiest hours of the day when people are trying to get to work or back home to their families.

In 2020, the legislature will review the commission’s final recommendations. As they consider a tax on every mile we drive, they should recognize it for what it is – a political tool for which the public would pay enormously, both in the diversion of money from roads and in reduced privacy, autonomy, and mobility for everyone.

Mariya Frost is the transportation director at the Washington Policy Center, a think tank with offices in Seattle, Spokane, the Tri-Cities, and Olympia.