Last year Oregon lawmakers cobbled together a transportation bill, House Bill 2017, designed to raise badly needed funds for Oregon highways. Now lawmakers are taking a second look at last year’s handiwork and cleaning up problems in House Bill 4059.

The new bill is a mishmash of thises and thats including broadening the scope of a $15 sales tax on most bicycles sold in the state. Lawmakers would be wise to eliminate that tax altogether.

The tax, currently $15 on every new bike with wheels at least 26 inches in diameter that sells for at least $200, seems to have been aimed at teenager and adult bike riders. Yet it doesn’t reach all of them, and that’s apparently a problem. If lawmakers approve an amendment to 4059, the wheel-size criterion will be eliminated and, presumably, everyone will be happy.

Everyone, that is, but kids or the parents of kids if they are buying new bicycles. In reality the bike tax raises so little — just over $1 million a year — that it’s difficult to believe that a million annually in new funds for biking enhancements is going to make a difference in how many bikers there are in the state. Moreover, a huge majority of adult cyclists in Oregon already pay for roads, both through property taxes and fuel taxes. While the money collected is supposed to go to enhance bicycle riding and walking, it also provides a small monetary incentive not to buy a bike at all. Scrap the bike tax.