R.A. Ford of Dayville has taken up the cudgel of information and with it is lambasting the proposed three dollar auto license.

During the week he spoke at the courthouse in Canyon City, and also at Prairie City, John Day and Mt. Vernon. The intense interest that Mr. Ford has shown dates back to 1917 when the state and county road program was outlined. At that time he visioned the completion of splendid highways traversing Grant County and linking with state highways, giving the people, even in the more remote localities, free and easy access to roads that they could travel the year around.

Serving two terms as representative in the legislature from Grant County he became saturated with the legal enactment of motor vehicle laws, and the laws pertaining to raising the funds necessary for the working out of the road program. In fact, he claims authorship of the present Market Road law, and was chairman of the committee on roads back in the days when the John Day Highway was born.

And it is for this reason, partly, that it rather infuriates him to see the road program attacked before it has time to complete the system of roads that are planned and agreed upon for Grant.

With his address, he had a blackboard about six feet square covered with figures showing the amount of state road bonds that are out and which will have to be paid, and they aggregate something like 36 million dollars. In case the three-dollar license was passed, this money would have to be paid, and inasmuch as the six percent limitation does not apply to this bonded indebtedness, in case the automobile went onto the assessment roll, the levy would be made sufficient to raise the funds, regardless of the amount of the amount of the necessary raise.

Under the present license and gas tax, the state receives annually, $10,634,393. This money pays bonds interest, new construction and maintenance. When segregated, it shows for auto license the sum of $5,230,000 plus $1,295,000 for trucks and $3,879,393 for gas and for miscellaneous $230,000.

Under the three dollar license this would be reduced to a total of $6,104,993, leaving a balance of $4,529,500 to be raised by a property tax.

The maintenance of the roads is kept up by the gas tax of three cents and they must be kept in repair for the state has millions of dollars invested in these roads and without proper attention they would rapidly disintegrate and go to pieces. And the new construction must proceed. Grant county has the Mitchell cut-off road, cost $720,000 to build and the Joaquin Miller Trail.

If the three dollar license were passed it would take some time to devise other means to raise the necessary tax and it could not become effective until June 1929. And the referendum might be applied and this would throw the entire road program into chaos until 1930. In the meantime, interest on the bonds must be paid and a certain amount of repair work done. It might result in making an expensive wreck of the splendid start the state has made, and be a mighty expensive experiment. At least that is the way Mr. Ford feels about it.