SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It’s hard enough for Tracey Hall and her 100-pound pooch, Sweetpea, to call this RV home.
A retiree living on a fixed income, Tracey said she didn’t qualify for the last few rounds of stimulus checks.
“A full tank is 35 gallons,” Hall said.
Thirty-five times Friday's per-gallon average of $5.90 is $206.
But Hall’s vehicle registration is expired. She does not have a permanent address or utility bills to help her update it. So now, she doesn’t qualify for Newsom's proposed rebate either.
“I am on the street technically," she said. "I am in a catch 22 position for that very reason, and there's a lot of us like that.”
A lot can change between now and when you actually get $400 in your pocket from Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed gas tax rebate, but as it stands right now, people have questions.
For example, active military members are not required to change their vehicle registration to California. They pay for gas, and California is home to the most active military members.
“It's good that he's interested in providing some form of tax relief,” Republican Assemblymember Kevin Kiley said.
Kiley said this proposal is a step in the right direction, but more work needs to be done to iron out the kinks, and he will still try to push forward his bill that would immediately suspend the gas tax you pay at the pump.
“This is just way more complicated than it needs to be," Kiley said. "We're gonna have to create some new program, the bureaucracy is going to be involved, we saw how well California's bureaucracy has done delivering EDD checks to people.”
At a press conference Thursday, Newsom said there’s going to be more changes to come.
“I look forward to working with the legislature to advance and to adjust over the course of the next few weeks,” Newsom said.
When asked about electric vehicles qualifying under his plan, Newsom said they're working on that too. One compromise he’d consider is capping who is eligible by the price of their vehicle.
“In fact, we've already initiated that going back a week or so ago, looking to see what's possible in terms of the VIN numbers, the registration at the DMV, to make that determination of the value of the vehicle," Newsom said. "So I'm very open to that discussion."
Political Reporter Morgan Rynor did reach out to the governor’s office several times to ask about the military loophole, and just in general what people who live in California but don’t have their vehicles registered yet, should do.
At the time this article was published, they had not responded.
