At moments, Romney went so far as to make high gas prices out to be a welcome reality for the foreseeable future, one that people needed to learn to live with. When lieutenant governor Kerry Healey, a fellow Republican, called for suspending the state’s 23.5 cent gas tax during a price spike in May 2006, Romney rejected the idea, saying it would only further drive up gasoline consumption. “I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline,” Romney said, according to the Quincy Patriot Ledger’s report at the time. “I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.”…

But at other times, he was fearless about pushing policies that would increase prices at the pump. Just a few months into his first term in 2003, his administration pushed for expanding a fee on wholesale fuel deliveries that resulted in a two-cent per-gallon price increase at the pump. The fee went toward a state fund that paid for cleaning spills and leaks at gas stations and had been running low. The board that oversaw the fund had sought approval from Romney’s predecessor, Republican Jane Swift, to double the fee from an effective half-cent per gallon to a full cent per gallon. But when Romney came into office, his administration proposed quintupling the effective rate, to 2.5 cents per gallon.

The administration’s argument was that the higher increase would put the fund on solid footing for good, recalled Stephen Dodge, associate director of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Petroleum Council, who sat on the board overseeing the fund.