Tampa Bay voters again reject tax for transportation improvements

A referendum that would have raised Hillsborough County’s sales tax from 7.5% to 8.5% to fund transportation projects has once again come up short.

Promoted by All for Transportation, a nonprofit, citizen-led advocacy group, the measure failed to pass muster with voters in Tuesday's midterm elections. On its website, All for Transportation says the tax would have raised about $340 million in its first year alone, and that money could have addressed “a wide range of solutions to our county's greatest shortcoming — unsafe roads, endless traffic and lack of transit options.”

The initiative first surfaced in 2018, when voters approved it in that year’s midterm elections and its implementation raised millions of dollars, but a string of legal challenges led to it being declared unconstitutional. The 2022 version also wound up in the courts and wouldn’t have been on the ballot at all if not for a successful appeal by the Hillsborough County Commission.