AB 1783 prohibits any city, county, or political subdivision in California from imposing a vehicle‑miles‑traveled (VMT) tax — defined broadly to include charges calculated by odometer readings, telematics, GPS, or any method that measures miles. The measure also bars mileage‑based taxes used to replace or supplement fuel excise taxes or registration fees, exempts conventional tolls tied to specific facilities, and declares any inconsistent local program or pilot void and unenforceable.
This matters because it removes a major local policy lever for charging drivers based on road use — a tool often proposed to address declining fuel tax revenue as vehicles electrify, to fund local transportation projects, and to implement finer‑grained congestion pricing. The bill's explicit application to charter cities and the nullification of pilots could disrupt ongoing local trials, vendor contracts, and regional planning that rely on mileage measurement or telematics data for revenue design or policy testing.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill bans cities, counties, and their subdivisions from imposing any tax, fee, assessment, or charge that is calculated, wholly or partly, by miles traveled. It defines mileage‑based charges to include per‑mile levies and any scheme using odometer, telematics, GPS, or similar tracking. The measure preserves tolling of specific facilities so long as tolls are not computed on total miles traveled beyond that facility.
Who It Affects
Local governments (cities, counties, special districts) that were considering or piloting VMT schemes, regional transportation authorities, vendors of telematics and mileage‑tracking systems, and drivers and commercial fleets who would have been subject to per‑mile charges. It also affects agencies administering pilot programs and entities relying on mileage data for revenue models.
Why It Matters
By preempting mileage‑based local charges and voiding conflicting pilots, the bill centralizes decisions about VMT policy at the state level and limits local experimentation. That changes the fiscal toolkit available to jurisdictions facing declining fuel tax receipts and could shift pressure to Sacramento to design statewide solutions.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
AB 1783 creates a straightforward statewide prohibition: local governments may not adopt or enforce any tax or fee that uses vehicle miles traveled as a basis for the charge. The law's working definition of mileage‑based charges is deliberately broad — it catches direct per‑mile levies and any scheme that relies on odometer readings, telematics, GPS, or comparable tracking.
By using the phrase "in whole or in part," the statute covers hybrid or multi‑factor designs that incorporate distance as one component of a larger calculation.
The bill keeps a narrow exception for traditional tolling: local authorities can continue to charge for access to specific facilities (bridges, tunnels, tolled lanes) provided the tolls are not calculated on a driver's total miles outside the tolled facility. Practically, this protects facility‑specific pricing and conventional congestion pricing tied to entry or lane use, but it would leave distance‑based cordon charges or zone‑distance pricing in legal doubt.A second practical result is immediate: the statute declares any inconsistent program, pilot, regulation, or administrative action void and unenforceable.
That language targets ongoing local pilots and partnerships that use mileage data for research or phased revenue collection — potentially undoing locally negotiated contracts, data‑sharing arrangements, and federally funded demonstrations. Finally, the Legislature includes findings that the subject is a statewide concern to ensure the prohibition binds charter cities as well as general law cities, avoiding a home‑rule defense by local governments.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 7283.61(a) flatly forbids a city, county, or political subdivision from imposing, administering, collecting, or enforcing any vehicle miles traveled or mileage‑based tax.
The bill defines a mileage‑based tax to include any charge calculated "in whole or in part" from odometer readings, telematics data, GPS data, or similar mileage‑tracking methods, capturing both per‑mile and hybrid formulas.
Subsection (b)(3) expressly covers mileage charges used as a replacement for, supplement to, or offset of fuel excise taxes, registration fees, or other transportation‑related charges.
Subsection (c) preserves tolls for specific facilities but closes the door on tolls computed using a motorist's total miles traveled beyond the tolled facility (thereby distinguishing facility tolls from distance‑based charges).
Section 2 contains legislative findings declaring the issue a matter of statewide concern, which the bill uses to apply the prohibition to charter cities as well as to general‑law municipalities.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Broad prohibition on local mileage‑based taxes
Subsection (a) accomplishes the statute's operative ban: it bars any local authority from imposing, administering, collecting, or enforcing a VMT or mileage‑based tax. For practitioners this is an affirmative, preventive rule rather than a permissive limit — it creates a local‑level dead end for any proposal that would quantify charges by miles. Local ordinances that attempt to replicate distance‑based schemes would be directly inconsistent with state law.
Wide definition of 'vehicle miles traveled' and covered methods
Subsection (b) defines the prohibited tax widely. It lists direct per‑mile assessments and expressly brings in odometer, telematics, GPS, and 'any similar mileage‑tracking method.' That wording is designed to capture future tracking technologies and hybrid charges that use distance as an input. The clause about replacement or supplementation of fuel excise taxes and registration fees closes a common policy pathway localities were considering to shore up transportation revenue as gasoline use declines.
Tolling carve‑out tied to specific facilities
Subsection (c) preserves conventional toll collection for specific facilities such as bridges or tolled lanes, but it limits the form those tolls may take. The provision allows facility‑specific pricing so long as the charge is not calculated using a motorist's total miles traveled beyond the tolled asset. This makes explicit that tolls remain for discrete infrastructure, but it likely excludes distance‑based congestion pricing that bills drivers based on miles driven within or across jurisdictions.
Immediate nullification of inconsistent pilots and programs
Subsection (d) makes any inconsistent program, pilot, regulation, or administrative action void and unenforceable. That language has immediate operational consequences: local pilot projects that collect or compute mileage data for revenue‑testing or enforcement could lose legal cover and face termination. Contracting parties and grant recipients should expect legal review and potential contract renegotiations if their work relied on mileage measurements to generate fees or to evaluate pricing models.
Legislative finding: statewide concern and charter city application
Section 2 contains the Legislature's finding that the subject is a matter of statewide concern, which the bill uses to bind charter cities despite home‑rule protections in Article XI, Section 5 of the California Constitution. That choice anticipates and attempts to preempt home‑rule litigation by framing VMT taxation as beyond purely local governance. Practically, the finding raises the legal bar for challenges but does not guarantee immunity from judicial review of preemption claims.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Finance across all five countries.
Explore Finance in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Private drivers and small‑fleet operators — they avoid new per‑mile levies and the administrative complexity and potential privacy exposure of mileage tracking.
- Privacy and civil‑liberties advocates — the prohibition prevents local mandates that would require GPS or telematics data collection for taxation purposes.
- Residents of low‑mileage and rural communities — these populations are protected from distance‑based schemes that can be regressive for long‑distance commuters or residents of sprawling regions.
Who Bears the Cost
- Cities, counties, and regional transportation agencies — they lose an option to raise user‑based revenue and to price road use more precisely for congestion management and maintenance funding.
- Vendors of telematics, GPS tracking, and VMT billing platforms — a potential market for local mileage billing contracts is explicitly foreclosed.
- State budget and transportation planners — the prohibition could shift pressure to the state to devise alternative revenue mechanisms, increasing the planning burden and potential fiscal shortfalls at the local level.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is whether local governments should retain the ability to price road use by miles — a technically precise and policy‑targeted tool for funding and congestion management — versus setting a statewide prohibition that protects privacy, preserves predictable fuel‑based revenue distribution, and avoids a patchwork of local tracking regimes; the bill resolves that dilemma by favoring uniform prohibition at the potential cost of local fiscal and policy flexibility.
AB 1783 trades local flexibility and a potential instrument for modernizing road finance for statewide uniformity and privacy protection. The statute's broad phrasing — "in whole or in part" and its inclusion of "similar mileage‑tracking methods" — will sweep in many designs beyond simple per‑mile charges, creating legal uncertainty for hybrid pricing proposals that combine distance with time, weight, or emissions.
Local pilots that previously included mileage metrics are rendered void, which could interrupt federally funded demonstrations and create contractual disputes with vendors and research partners.
Implementation will raise hard questions. Courts may still be asked to define the boundary between lawful facility tolling and disallowed distance‑based charges — for example, whether zone‑based billing that multiplies entry counts by average distance crosses the line.
The bill also invites substitution effects: prohibiting local VMT taxes doesn't stop states or the federal government from adopting mileage charges, nor does it prevent other local user fees structured to approximate mileage impacts without explicit mileage inputs. Finally, the bill leaves unresolved equity trade‑offs: it protects drivers from one form of regressive charge but also removes a policy tool that could be designed to make users pay proportionally for road wear, congestion, or emissions.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.