RICHMOND, Va. – A group of bipartisan Virginia senators will introduce a bill that has a gasoline sales tax to finance road construction and maintenance, The Washington Post reports. The plan will be presented as an alternative to another proposal for transportation funding.

The new proposal will be offered in the Senate Finance Committee. Under the proposal, drivers would shell out a 5 percent sales tax in addition to Virginia’s gasoline tax of 17.5 cents per gallon. The additional tax would raise approximately $600 million each year.

Lawmakers say the idea potentially could undo the compromise transportation deal that Republicans in the Senate and House of Delegates negotiated earlier this month. “That [the gasoline sales tax] would kill the deal,” Sen. Kenneth Stolle told the newspaper. “As sure as I’m standing here today, that bill will be dead on arrival in the House.”

Del. Clarke Hogan said his House colleagues strongly oppose higher taxes on gasoline. “That’s just a gas tax by another name. It’s one of the least reliable sources of revenue in the last 20 years,” he told the newspaper.

The sales tax on gasoline will provide money to relieve congestion across Virginia without siphoning funds from other state programs, Sen. Richard Saslaw said. The gasoline sales tax is at the center of broader efforts to add new money into the road and transit network.

Saslaw said the gasoline sales tax would get money from out-of-state drivers and truckers who drive on the roads but do not pay local or state taxes. He told the newspaper that 40 percent of Virginia’s interstate traffic is people who live elsewhere.