Wednesday, February 20th, 2019
Governor to propose gas tax hike
By William Kincaid
COLUMBUS - Gov. Mike DeWine said he will recommend a gas tax hike on Thursday to the General Assembly to help cover the cost of roadway work.
DeWine at an Associated Press forum on Tuesday indicated a gas tax rate increase is the only viable way to address a recently discovered roadwork funding structural deficit. He did not say by how much he proposes to increase the gas tax rate, which is now 28 cents per gallon.
Ohio is "short $1.5 billion per year on the average for the next few years" just in terms of being able to maintain the status quo of roadwork that has been undertaken in the past, DeWine said.
"We are fast approaching a cliff that we're going to fall off of, fast approaching a point in time when we're going to have a huge, huge deficit every year in regard to what we want to maintain versus what we have the financial ability to do," DeWine said.
DeWine said he knew a financial problem existed while looking at figures during the gubernatorial campaign but didn't fully grasp how serious it is until digging deeper.
"People very legitimately would ask, 'Why is that just now coming to attention?' " he said. "And the answer is that we created bonds, we got money and that money that came in masked the structural deficit and masked it for a number of years."
The money now is either gone or obligated, but the state will pay back the debt for a long time, DeWine said, adding that debt service alone on all highway bonds this year is $390 million.
"That structural deficit has really been hidden up until now, and the day of reckoning is finally here, and we have an obligation to face that," DeWine said.
Moreover, the bonds were backed by the future income from a turnpike but "that money was not made available to local government so your townships, your villages, your cities, counties have been struggling without any kind of relief," DeWine said.
He believes it would be irresponsible to borrow additional money at this point.
"Look, we've got to deal with $390 million a year before we do anything else. It's probably not prudent for us to borrow more money so that we can get through the next few years and then we'll have to face the problems," he said.
Nationally, Ohio has the fourth-largest interstate system, second-largest inventory of bridges and sixth-highest number of vehicle-miles traveled, DeWine said, adding that the state's roads are an essential part of its economy and prosperity.
"Our miles traveled continue to go up, but because of efficiency in our cars the revenue from those miles is pretty much flat," he said.
