Gov. David Ige’s proposal to increase the state’s vehicle weight tax, gasoline tax and registration fees won tentative approval from a Senate committee Monday after a key lawmaker announced she will amend the bill to increase the state gas tax by more than 62 percent.

Senate Bill 1012 is part of a package of measures that would raise an additional $100 million a year for the state Highway Fund, money the Ige administration says it needs to proceed with an array of projects to increase highway capacity, reduce traffic congestion and improve road maintenance across the state.

As part of that package, the Ige administration proposed to increase the state gasoline tax to 22 cents from 16 cents per gallon statewide. However, Senate Transportation and Energy Committee Chairwoman Lorraine Inouye announced Monday she is upping the ante on that gas tax proposal.

Inouye told listeners at the close of a public hearing she is amending the Ige bill to increase the gas tax to 26 cents from the current 16 cents a gallon.

In an interview after the hearing, Inouye said she wants to tweak the Ige plan by raising most of the extra money the state needs for highway construction and maintenance from gas taxes. Her plan is to rely less on additional revenue from weight tax and registration fee increases.

“People are already saying like last year, ‘Double whammy, triple whammy,’” Inouye said, referring to the impact of stiff increases in all three taxes. Instead, she proposed to adopt smaller increases in the weight tax and registration fee than Ige proposed, and adopt a larger gas tax increase.

State Director of Transportation Ford Fuchigami said he needs to review the impact of Inouye’s proposal before he can comment on it.

Inouye’s proposal was approved 3-0 by the transportation committee, with Inouye and Sens. Maile Shimabukuro and Breene Harimoto voting in favor of the amended bill. Sens. Donovan Dela Cruz and J. Kalani English were not present for the vote.

The measure still needs to clear some substantial hurdles before it can win final approval. The bill now goes to the Senate Ways and Means Committee for further consideration and must also be approved in two floor votes by the entire Senate. From there it would advance to the state House, which last year rejected a similar gas tax increase proposal by the Ige administration.

Inouye said she advanced the bill in part to ensure lawmakers have a number of options available to them for financing the state’s transportation needs. Senators are also considering options such as using some of Oahu’s half-percent excise surcharge for rail to fund other transportation projects, or allowing the neighbor island counties to adopt similar surcharges to fund their state transportation projects.

Katherine Kupukaa of Mililani urged lawmakers to reject the proposal for a gas tax increase and other increases.

“With Hawaii’s cost of living, it is appalling that you would have to keep on adding costs to the citizens of this state just because we own and are able to afford a car,” she told the committee members. “Not all of us have resources of keeping up with the maintenance of our vehicles. I am on a fixed income, so I have to be quite frugal in spending.”

Kupukaa noted the Honolulu City Council is also considering an increase in the city gas tax, which would put even more of a burden on Oahu motorists.

Harimoto asked Fuchigami whether he would commit to a list of specific projects that would be built with the money from the increased gas and other taxes, but Fuchigami said he could not promise his department would stick to such a list.

Fuchigami said his department has had to absorb a variety of costs from unexpected events such as mudslides that block roadways or shoreline erosion that undercuts highways, and those events often require extremely expensive repairs.

“These are added expenses that we normally do not budget for, but they do come up and we have to deal with them,” Fuchigami said.

Harimoto replied that “actually, I have a hard time justifying in my own mind to increase the tax when I don’t know what we’re going to get funded.”

He added, “For me to be accountable to my constituents, to say, ‘Yes, let’s increase the tax,’ I think we need to show our constituents what we’re getting for the tax increase.”