With gas prices hitting record highs, President Trump has floated the idea of suspending the federal gas tax, which is 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel. But Ohio’s gas tax has a bigger impact, since it’s more than double that number.
House Bill 850 would suspended half the state's gas tax for three months. That would cut the tax on gasoline from 38.5 cents per gallon to 19.25 cents, and from 47 cents to 23.5 cents per gallon for diesel.
But Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said that would be a lot less money for roads construction, infrastructure projects and the State Highway Patrol.
"I haven't really talked to our caucus about that," Huffman told reporters this week. "If we do consider to do that, I think there needs to be a trigger that is the price of gasoline drops below a certain level then the tax goes back in.”
But Huffman also offered a warning: “I think we just have to look at, and everybody has to understand, there are going to be fewer road projects and bridge projects and things like that if we do that.”
Gov. Mike DeWine is even more concerned about changing the gas tax.
“I think it would be a very grave disservice to the people of the state of Ohio to to suspend that user tax, which is really what it is. And I think Ohioans would feel the pain of that in the months ahead as our roads deteriorated," DeWine told reporters last week.
DeWine added that with rising costs for road construction, the money being collected from the gas tax now doesn't go as far as it used to.
“Anything that would take away from that would put us in a much worse position. No Ohioan wants to pay any tax on our roads. But the truth is, we like to have good roads and we like to be able to drive," DeWine said. "The amount that we have currently today into the future, it's not too long until we're going to be starting to really go backward. If you look at, for example, we're now in 2026, if you look at where we will be in 2028, we will be in a position to do virtually nothing new."
DeWine had asked for a gas tax increase of 18 cents as one of his first proposals after being sworn into office in 2019. DeWine said the money was needed with the Ohio Department of Transportation facing a $1.5 billion budget gap. He and state lawmakers struck a compromise when they raised the gas tax by 10.5 cents. An effort to repeal the gas tax increase in 2022 went nowhere.
