Jeffrey Quick's Blog

When is a gas tax hike not a gas tax hike?

OK, maybe the state highway patrol needs money to run driver's licence examinations (Why can't insurance companies do that?) and check on motorists who are broken down or in accidents.

To plug the hole in the patrol's budget, Strickland wants to cut a good chunk from an obscure state discount on the gas tax given to wholesalers to offset evaporation at the pump. The change would net the state $38 million annually.

I'm not too concerned about how the legislature plays the budgetary shell game. But this worries me:

Strickland said Ohioans would be "protected at the pump" because the evaporation benefit to wholesalers - not retailers - would be cut. But the head of a group that represents 400 Ohio gas wholesalers said gas prices would eventually rise as a result.

"You're taking $40 million out of the economy and giving it to the patrol so they can go around and give people tickets," said Roger Dryer, president of the Ohio Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association.

Strickland's proposal would chop the wholesalers' discount from the current 1.3 percent to 0.35 percent.

The governor said there would be "no justification" for wholesalers to raise gas prices in response to his proposal.

"When this benefit was originally provided, technology wasn't as good as it is today in terms of evaporation loss," he said. "We're trying to hold retailers harmless and asking wholesalers to absorb a reasonable reduction in the benefit."

This bespeaks a worrisome level of economic illiteracy. Does Strickland really think that since wholesalers really don't need the evaporation credit anymore, that it somehow hasn't figured into their price structures?

Damnit, Ted, if you're going to tax us, then tax us. Don't pussyfoot around. You're a Democrat; we expect economic rape.