Negotiations have deadlocked over the legislative session's major road-funding bill, sending the measure to the Senate floor for a spirited debate this morning.

Senate Bill 108 passed its third and final Senate committee Tuesday, once again on a party-line vote.

Then, late in the day, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry declared that weeks of Republican- Democratic negotiations had ended.

The GOP intends to offer amendments to the bill even though they likely will fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate, Penry said.

Fees would increase

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, would increase vehicle registration fees for most drivers by $32 next year and $41 each year thereafter, raising $265 million annually to repair roads and fix 125 rundown bridges.

It also would make it easier to impose tolls on existing roads and would fund a pilot project to study alternative means of funding state highways, including a fee based on the number of vehicle miles traveled - "vmt" for short - by each car.

Republicans wanted the tolling expansion and the pilot study out of the bill.

They also wanted a registration fee increase of no more than $15 and to use some general fund and severance-tax money for roads. Their plan would raise $125 million in its first year and $1.7 billion over 10 years, Penry said.

"This is not chicken feed we offered," Penry, R-Grand Junction, said. "But it's their choice. Elections have consequences."

Sponsor is puzzled

Democrats responded that the money raised by the GOP version is not enough and there is no room to use general-fund money when some $823 million already is being cut out of the budget.

"They're trying to take money away from services such as education, higher education and health care to put into roads," said Senate Majority Leader Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont.

Gibbs emphasized that participation in the vmt study, which could involve putting GPS trackers in cars to determine how far they've traveled, would be voluntary. And he predicted that nothing that substantially shifts the way people pay for roads is likely to come from the study for at least 20 years.

Penry replied that whether the project was voluntary or not, it was bad policy, especially for rural Coloradans who have to drive longer distances.

Gibbs said he was perplexed that the pilot project is now dominating so much of the conversation surrounding the bill.

"I'm very surprised, because this is strictly voluntary," he said. "If you don't want to participate, you don't have to. It's a way to look outside the box and look at alternative funding mechanisms. That's all it is."