The increase will start July 1, would cost the average Ohio driver with a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon about an extra dollar a week, and will raise about $865 million a year for new transportation projects and efforts toward repairing Ohio’s badly-deteriorated roads and bridges. Under the budget, municipalities will get 45 percent of the proceeds of the gas tax — up from the 40 percent they currently get.
Ohio’s beleaguered public transit authorities will also see more money in the new budget. Ohio currently provides roughly $33 million a year for public transit — among the lowest levels in the country per capita. Funding will double under the new budget to $70 million a year. That’s still less than the $125 million the Central Ohio Transit Authority has said is needed to shore up public transportation in the state.
Another revenue raising mechanism in the new budget: Owners registering new electric vehicles will pay an extra $200, and hybrid registrations will cost an extra $100.
DeWine has argued that Ohio needed every cent of his proposed increase, which would have taken the state’s gas tax from 28 cents to 46 cents. Instead, Ohioans will pay 38.5 cents per gallon for the tax — higher than Kentucky’s 26 cents and West Virginia’s 35.7 cents, but lower than Michigan’s 44.1 cents and Indiana’s 42.9 cents.
The gas tax increase is Ohio’s first since 2005.
The budget also does away with a requirement that drivers have front license plates on their vehicles. That provision has local relevancy: a traffic stop over a missing front license plate is what led to the controversial shooting death of unarmed motorist Sam DuBose by then-University of Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing in 2015.
The budget next goes to DeWine for his signature. He could opt to line-item veto some provisions.
This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2019.
And where was all this discussion of massive state transportation infrastructure deficits during the election campaign time???
Just like the crooks over at City Hall (Taxin Jackson) and the county (thief Budish), whatever the newly increased gasoline tax amount is, will never be enough, and there will be yet be another tax hike just around the corner!!!
If we tax drivers for using roads, why don’t we tax the heroin buyers to pay for their treatment.
You do realize, of course, that by increasing transportation costs, not only will you feel it at the gas pump, but you will feel it at the checkout line – thats EVERY checkout line – from the grocery store to the drug store to the clothing store to…
Thanks for nuthin
Front plates make it easier to identify those breaking the law, whether it’s a fleeing robber or domebody running a red light or just some drunk driver or any other driver who’s being an asshole behind the wheel, including reckless drivers, tailgaters, or some road-rage idiot who’s following you and looking for trouble.
Also makes it easier to identify those who are trying to abduct females and young children. But what the hey, thanks to this short-sighted and foolish change in in our motor vehicle laws, now the prison inmates will only have to make half as many plates, right?
It’s about time public transit will get more money. RTA’s trains are decades old and reaching the end of their useful lives. The BlueLine and Green Line LRVs are almost 40 years old and the Red Line heavy rail cars are almost 35 years old. Keeping them running is like trying to keep your 1994 Saturn with 350,000 miles on the odometer. One thing after another goes wrong, and it never stops. We need new cars, folks.
Will the 45% really come to NEO ?? We’ve seen what’s happened before, great roads around Columbus, Cincinnati and Rural Ohio.