Higher Ohio gas tax is the right path forward

Ohio legislators who believe that shortchanging Ohio’s roads and bridges is a pathway to re-election are serving neither their constituents nor the state’s best interests.

Passing a poor excuse for a gasoline tax increase, as the Senate did late Thursday, serves no purpose but to highlight that Senate Republicans are more concerned about their political futures than in doing the job they were elected to do.

There is really only one right way forward, and that is for lawmakers to secure enough new revenue to do both the maintenance and new construction required to keep Ohio roads and bridges safe and passable.

Ohioans who wish to contact their lawmakers about this matter can find their contact information here: www.legislature.ohio.gov/ legislators/district-maps.

We are extremely disappointed but not surprised that Republicans in control of the Ohio Senate made the ill-advised and factually unsupported decision to raise Ohio’s gas tax by an amount that doesn’t even account for inflation since 2005, the last time the state’s 28-cents-pergallon gas tax was raised. To convert the tax from that rate to today’s purchasing power, an 8-cent increase is required.

Nor did Senate Republicans justify giving Gov. Mike Dewine just a third of the 18-cent increase he had requested as the minimum needed to maintain roadways and ensure public safety.

Even in directing most of the paltry increase to road maintenance, the Senate budget plan still cuts $265 million from what the Ohio Department of Transportation says it needs for highway repair. And it slashes what ODOT and Dewine had proposed for safety improvements by $450 million and new construction by $335 million.

The Dispatch strongly recommends that the Ohio General Assembly take a head-clearing, bonejarring drive across Ohio’s crumbling highways this weekend, then return to Columbus to approve the 18-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase that Dewine requested as the minimum needed for safe, navigable Ohio highways.

With a looming March 31 deadline for a new two-year

transportation budget to be enacted, hopes now lie with a House-senate conference committee to act this coming week to provide the funding needed so that the state’s highways don’t turn into safety hazards and roadblocks for economic development.

Standing in the way of what should be a bipartisan goal of good roadway stewardship are those Republicans in Senate leadership positions — if you can call their failure to act responsibly “leadership.”

It’s not as if the challenge before Senate President Larry Obhof of Medina and his lieutenants appeared unexpectedly like a rash of winter potholes.

Anyone running for the Ohio General Assembly should have known they would have to deal with serious transportation needs since at least last summer, when highway and trucking interests joined forces to make a case for investing in transportation infrastructure.

We shared some findings of the transportation lobby’s study in September, noting that proceeds from Ohio Turnpike bonds — which the administration of former Gov. John Kasich had used to prop up funding for roads and bridges — were running out and the state’s gasoline tax has not budged from 28 cents a gallon since 2005. And it’s worth noting that the turnpike-backed funds did not help local governments with their responsibilities to build and maintain city, county and township roads.

Among interest groups seeking to influence legislative action, support has only grown for the state to provide adequate transportation funding to protect Ohio’s status as being conveniently located within a day’s drive of 60 percent of the population of the U.S. and Canada. The Fix Our Roads Ohio coalition now includes dozens of organizations representing local government, public safety, business, transportation and regional planning councils.

Also known as FOR Ohio, the coalition warned in January that a third of the state’s major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and that more than 1,650 bridges are structurally deficient.

The Ohio House of Representatives took the first unwise cut at the governor’s transportation budget request earlier this month and reduced the gas-tax increase to 10.7 cents per gallon, to be phased in over three years. (Neither the House nor Senate plans allow for future increases to keep up with inflation.)

The House plan was shortsighted and inadequate to make a significant impact on the condition of Ohio roadways, but at least House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican of Glenford, was able to get the transportation budget moved out of his chamber and on to the Senate with a higher level of new funding.

The Senate’s two-week delay in putting a reasonable funding plan in place and then its meager last-minute increase puts one in mind of the gridlock Ohio motorists will increasingly find themselves in without the state investing properly in its highways.

The feeble Senate fuel tax also leaves local governments in the lurch, failing to provide the funding they desperately need to meet their responsibilities for city, county and township roadwork.

Obhof did not do his members any favors by slashing the gas tax hike to this laughable low level.

Senate Republicans, who hold a 24-9 majority over Democrats, would have been much smarter to use their strong position to provide the resources to protect Ohio’s logistical advantage of location rather than put up detour signs on the state’s economic development efforts.

As has been noted repeatedly, Ohio’s stagnant gas tax rate of

28 cents a gallon is already lower than all surrounding states but Kentucky, whose lawmakers are weighing an increase. Pennsylvania’s gas tax is more than twice Ohio’s at 58.7 cents a gallon; Michigan’s is 44.1 cents and Indiana’s is 42.9 cents, followed by West Virginia at 35.7 cents and Kentucky at 26 cents.

While the state gas tax here remains as much as 30 cents a gallon lower than Pennsylvania’s tariff, fuel companies have no reluctance to jump their Ohio pump price by as much as 60 cents a gallon overnight, as they did last week in Columbus. Perhaps Big Oil would be more hesitant to force such wild fluctuation on Ohio motorists if Ohio’s gas taxes were more in line with those of surrounding states.

If legislators will not give Ohio motorists safe and reliable roadways, they deserve to encounter a rocky road to re-election.