Economic Challenges

Economic Challenges

In recent times, the distribution of transportation funding revenues has become a hot issue at both the state and federal levels. In the last reauthorization of the federal transportation bill, many states called for a better way to divide up the states' shares of the Highway Trust Fund - more than 60 percent of which are generated by the federal gas tax. Some states argued that their shares of federal transportation dollars should be equal to the amount of gas tax revenue they paid into the Trust Fund. Other states wanted their shares determined by need. To a large extent both groups of states prevailed in obtaining greater equity.

In Ohio, and some other states, state transportation dollars flow to localities on the basis of neither of these standards for revenue distribution. The result in Ohio is a staggered pattern of state transportation spending that is basically anti-city and even anti-suburb. In fact, funds are actually diverted away from the very places that struggle with the greatest transportation needs and pay the most in gas taxes.

Ohio’s highways are controlled by the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). Funding for Ohio’s highways come from the federal government through the United States Department of Transportation, specifically, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). FHWA is given the broad responsibility of ensuring that America’s roads and highways continue to be the safest and most technologically up to date. Although State and local governments own most of the nation’s highways, the Federal Highway Administration provides financial and technical support to them for construction, improvements, and preservation programs on America’s highway system. The FHWA has an annual budge of more than thirty-billion dollars and is funded predominantly by fuel and motor vehicle excise taxes. The budget then gets divided up between two programs. Those programs are federal aid funding for state and local governments, and federal lands Highways funding for parks, forests, Indian reservations, etc.

According to the Ohio Department of Transportation, its