- We're spending some time with Mike Deehan from the GBH News State House Bureau.

In our remaining moment here, Mike, there are actually quite a number of other issues and legislative priorities that were either slowed down or sidelined in COVID.

When's the last time we talked about the gas tax to pay for the MBTA for traffic that has been a lot different lately?

Where does that stand?

- Yeah, well, a few Beacon Hill leaders wanted to raise taxes during the pandemic and during the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic shutdowns, but there are ideas.

Democrats are coming back to that.

Senator Joe Boncore from Winthrop, he's the Senate Transportation chair, he's got a new bill that would do a 4-cent gas tax for three years in a row and start a charge on commercial parking and that would actually make the MBT and regional buses free, so that's kind of one of the bigger proposals we're dealing with right now.

But the House passed a gas tax hike in 2019, well, actually, early 2020, and now we're trying to see, what is the appetite now, is it time to raise taxes, and, really, what's a commute gonna be like?

What is our traffic congestion situation gonna be like?

Could be an opportunity as congestion gets back to normal, so to speak, to make some fixes now, but lawmakers are trying to determine what's the right thing to do, and we're gonna be hearing about that debate pretty much all this year.