Buffalo, NY (WBEN) - Erie County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz is recommending that the Erie County legislature not pursue a cap on gasoline sales and other taxes, because he says it will cost the county money without helping consumers deal with the rising cost of fuel.

"The other counties that did it are starting to roll back their caps because they realized the oil companies are not passing it along to consumers," Poloncarz says. "Albany County, Rockland County, Ononadaga County, all at some point have instituted a sales tax cap on gasoline and they have all abandoned them."

County legislators Kathy Konst and Michelle Ianello have called for a cap on the sales tax on gasoline at $3, regardless of what happens to the price of gas.

In the most recent two-week survey of gas prices nationwide, they rose 15-cents per gallon. The current Buffalo/Niagara Falls average is $3.76, according to the AAA.

Gasoline taxes are charged at the wholesale level, and wholesalers set their price accordingly. Poloncarz says a sales tax cut would increase profits, without any incentive to pass along a corresponding drop in the retail price.

His remarks mirror a similar debate that is unfolding on the presidential campaign trail, and in Albany.

The slew of proposals includes: a summertime suspension of federal gas taxes, backed by Republican Presidential candidate John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton; a windfall-profits tax on oil companies, supported by Clinton, Presidential candidate Barack Obama and many other Democrats; a cry for new refineries, nuclear power plants and drilling in the Alaska wilderness, sounded by President Bush and his GOP allies.

Republicans in the New York Senate and Assembly say cutting the local, state and federal taxes on gasoline could save up to $10 per fill-up during their proposed "summer holiday" from gas taxes.

But many political and economic obstacles stand in the way of the election-year proposal and it has stalled at the state capitol.

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