Yes, the fuel tax is far more perfect if the goal is to tax road usage and pollution but the state worried about future $$ and taxing gas is not future proof in the face of EVs. They want shovel read infrastructure to tax the people with money (the middle and upper middle class) and those people look like they're gonna buy EVs.

I'd like to think it's because EV proliferation makes the gas tax too regressive but I'm not that good at lying to myself.