State rep: Tax hike too much at once

CELINA - State Rep. Susan Manchester, R-Waynesfield, believes Gov. Mike DeWine's proposal to increase the state gas tax by 18 cents all at once would overburden Ohio motorists.

Instead, Manchester thinks legislators could find other areas in the state budget to cut to reduce the full 18-cent hike. She also touted House Bill 78, which she recently introduced in the House alongside State. Rep. Craig Riedel, R-Defiance, as a way for local government officials to free up money for road and bridge projects by giving them the option to bypass prevailing wage laws.

DeWine's administration on Thursday recommended increasing the state gas tax by 18 cents to 46 cents per gallon beginning July 1 and annually adjusting that tax for inflation to provide sufficient funding to maintain roads and bridges.

The tax would generate roughly $1.2 billion the first year and would be split among the Ohio Department of Transportation and local governments to begin addressing a recently discovered roadwork funding deficit.

"At first glance 18 cents still seems too high," Manchester said in an exchange on Monday with Mercer County Board of Elections members. "That's a pretty drastic increase from what we've had before."

Obviously, it's important to have good bridges and roads on which to drive, she said, pointing to the difficulties faced by "rural counties like this where people at the county and township level have felt especially strapped by cuts in local government funding."

Auglaize County Engineer Douglas Reinhart has been very vocal about the road funding predicament, saying how chip-and-seal has been used in places it shouldn't have been just to hold everything together, he said.

"I am sure there are other places in the state budget where we can make some cuts to help with this situation," she said. "It's hard for me to believe that we just have to automatically increase taxes in order to have enough revenue to fix this."

One cost savings could be achieved through House Bill 78, she said.

House Bill 78 would give local decision makers the option of not participating in prevailing wage laws, according to a news release from Riedel. Current prevailing-wage mandates kick in at $250,000 for local capital projects.

The bill would increase the threshold for new construction projects from $250,000 to $500,000, the news release states.

Prevailing wages mandated on projects in the small villages and townships making up the 84th District makes some public-improvement projects too expensive, as much as 20 percent higher, Manchester said.

"Oftentimes the prevailing wage is above the market rate in these areas," she said. "I think that as a local-control issue and even as a cost-savings measure, if we were able to make prevailing wage permissive - that would allow a lot of these counties and townships the ability to save money that could go toward (road and bridge) improvements."

Highlighting another priority of hers, Manchester, who sits on agriculture, education and transportation committees, wants to ensure that high-school graduation requirements are established well in advance for future classes.

Manchester said last year the Legislature did not finalize graduation requirements for the class of 2019 until December, which she characterized as a huge disservice to parents and educators alike.

"So I had a lot of principals in my district who had to bring parents and kids in and say, 'We don't know if your child will graduate this year unless the Legislature acts' - and the Legislature didn't take any action on it until December," she said.

That left a lot of people in a very bad place, not knowing if the students were on course to graduate, she said.

"I think we absolutely have to take that up and decide once and for all because
ideally we want the freshman class of next year to know exactly what they needed to do to graduate high school instead of waiting until possibly their senior year," Manchester said.

Manchester also said enthusiasm is building for reconsidering how the state's high-schools prepare students for careers, especially in light of the unfilled skilled-trade positions in Ohio.

Students should be positioned to pursue whatever opportunity is the best fit for them "rather than assuming that every child should go to college after high school."