Citizen Audit Toolkit
for the quiet majority :
ending gas tax
funding of motorized recreation

Is your property or special place threatened by the intrusive aspects of motorized recreation? Are you concerned about the increasing noise and accumulating damage to our state caused by motorized recreation?

MRR's Citizen Audit Toolkit is designed to support local and legislative efforts to end gas-tax funding of motorized recreation.

Every time you buy gas in Minnesota you fuel dedicated accounts for snowmobiles, ATVs, dirt-bike motorcycles, four-wheel drive trucks and motorboats. Despite the fact that Minnesota's Constitituion dedicates 100% of the state's gas tax to roads, $188 million in gas tax revenue was diverted from the state's roads and bridges to promote motorized recreation since 1994!  A 2008 legislative increase in the state gas tax increased diversions to motorized recreation to $42 million/biennium! 

ENDING GAS TAX FUNDING OF MOTORIZED RECREATION
BEGINS AT HOME

The good news is an opportunity to end these diversions resides in one’s local town or county board.

Gas tax funds are diverted to snowmobile and ATV clubs through local governments which must pass annual funding resolutions.  Resolutions are approved without discussion or citizen input.  Resolutions can be voted down.  This is where “we the people” come in.

Happily, local government fiscal agents are also required, in their grant-in-aid agreements with the DNR, to meet a variety of program requirements (such as easements to cross private property) and federal, state and local regulations .

Many local governments, such as St. Louis County, are disbursing gas tax funds despite pervasive violations of program requirements.  MRR’s Citizen Audit Toolkit for the Quiet Majority (to the right) is designed to assist citizens in gathering data about and challenging gas tax funding of ATV and snowmobile routes at the local level.