Ohio’s $1.6 billion highway budget shortfall

By Jerry Wray, Direc­tor of the Ohio Depart­ment of Transportation –

Ohio’s high­ways are essen­tial to keep­ing and cre­at­ing new jobs. Our state’s economy—especially our agri­cul­ture and man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­nesses, and the logis­tics oper­a­tions that sup­port them—depend on the abil­ity to quickly and effi­ciently ship raw mate­ri­als and fin­ished goods through­out Ohio, the coun­try and the world, and our state’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem makes it pos­si­ble.
This crit­i­cal eco­nomic engine risks run­ning out of gas. Fund­ing for our high­ways is dry­ing up and is not pro­jected to keep up with our needs. In fact, the state’s high­way bud­get faces a $1.6 bil­lion short­fall, which will force high-priority projects to face seri­ous com­ple­tion delays.
While the news of the $1.6 bil­lion high­way bud­get short­fall came as a shock to some, it has been expected for sev­eral years by those in the trans­porta­tion com­mu­nity. Unfor­tu­nately, lit­tle was done about it, assum­ing the funds would be found before the pro­jected prob­lem became real­ity. Well, here we stand today and we are fac­ing a mas­sive short­fall. This prac­tice of not being straight about the depth of our high­way fund­ing prob­lem is com­ing to an end. We have to hon­estly face up to the prob­lem if we’re ever going to fix it and pro­tect the job-creating tool that is our high­way sys­tem.
The cause of the prob­lem is sim­ple: the recent eco­nomic decline com­bined with more fuel effi­cient vehi­cles that use less gas, infla­tion and a fed­eral stale­mate over a long-term, national trans­porta­tion fund­ing plan has left Ohio—and every other state—in a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion. The fed­eral and state motor fuel taxes—Ohio’s pri­mary high­way fund­ing source—are not rais­ing as much money as they once did and are unable keep up with the ris­ing costs of con­struc­tion mate­ri­als.
Just as Ohio did when we came together last year to close our state’s $8 bil­lion state bud­get deficit, Ohio must come together to close our high­way deficit. The basic rea­son is sim­ple: we can­not pay high­way con­struc­tion work­ers with dol­lars that don’t exist. The big­ger rea­son is, of course, unless we keep our roads in good shape and build new projects that boost job-creation—as well as safety and con­ges­tion relief—we won’t fos­ter the jobs-friendly cli­mate Ohio so des­per­ately needs to get back on track.
The short­fall Ohio is fac­ing now is very frus­trat­ing, and I’m sure we share the same frus­tra­tion that every local mayor, county offi­cial, leg­is­la­tor, busi­ness leader and dri­ver feels.
These prob­lems aren’t insur­mount­able, not by a long­shot. We can move for­ward and find the funds to keep Ohio mov­ing if we have the courage to think in new ways.
A nat­ural place to start is with ODOT’s own costs. We’re tak­ing every con­ceiv­able step to reduce them. We’ve reduced our over­head and are using new ways to more effi­ciently and effec­tively build major projects faster than ever before.
Most impor­tant, how­ever, is that we’re explor­ing entirely new strate­gies for build­ing high­ways that break with the sta­tus quo and reflect a new way of think­ing. We’re look­ing at ideas to uti­lize money from the pri­vate sec­tor. We’re study­ing the poten­tial of the Ohio Turn­pike, and look­ing at all of the options from mov­ing the oper­a­tions under ODOT, to bond­ing against the turnpike’s rev­enue to a poten­tial lease.
No mat­ter what hap­pens, there will be con­trac­tual guide­lines on tolls and main­te­nance that will keep the road as strong as we know it today—or bet­ter. I wel­come the upcom­ing debate and want to engage in the con­ver­sa­tion with policy-makers at the fed­eral, state and local lev­els that is long over­due.
Gone is pre­tend­ing we don’t have a prob­lem. We must take this oppor­tu­nity to bring lead­ers to the table and work together to solve this prob­lem.
With­out a good trans­porta­tion sys­tem we lose jobs and Ohio fades. By apply­ing the same cre­ative spirit for which Ohio is known, we can solve this prob­lem and keep Ohio mov­ing in the right direction.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.