Ohio is three weeks into the 90-day gas tax break the state legislature enacted, but prices at the pump have climbed, with statewide motor fuel averages back above national averages.
Regular unleaded prices in Ohio rose by $0.36 per gallon between this Monday and last Monday, according to AAA’s Fuel Prices tracker. In that same timeframe, nationwide, unleaded prices fell one cent.
Issues with an oil refinery near Chicago have driven some of the surge in Ohio and neighboring Great Lakes states, according to GasBuddy Head of Petroleum Analysis Patrick De Haan. Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin have seen those surges, too.
But Ohio hasn’t levied its excise tax on motor fuel since Oct. 4. It taxes gasoline at $0.385 per gallon and diesel at $0.47 per gallon. Gov. Mike DeWine defended the legislation’s effectiveness Friday.
“It certainly is helping, there’s no doubt it is helping,” DeWine told reporters. “Everyone ... is still paying high prices for gasoline. But in Ohio, we have given them some break, we have given them a break on the taxes, which is basically the only thing that Ohio can do. There’s nothing else that we can do. These prices are caused by forces beyond the power of the governor or the legislature.”
But when asked by the Statehouse News Bureau, he said it’s “difficult to know for sure” whether the entirety of the cost savings are being passed onto consumers.
“The studies have shown, when this has been done in the past, that most of the savings are passed onto the consumer, but that some of the savings are not,” DeWine said. “That’s what we have seen in the past.”
Halting the excise tax on motor fuel just for 90 days may leave the state with an estimated $700 million hole in revenue, according to a Legislative Service Commission analysis. When they passed the gas tax break last month, lawmakers also moved $725 million from excesses in the Ohio General Revenue Fund to fill the hole the break was estimated to leave.
