By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio has fulfilled its duty to build roads in rural areas and should now steer more highway money back to the cities and suburbs that bear the brunt of traffic and bring in the most fuel taxes, says a report being released today by The Brookings Institution in Washington.

The 47-page report, backed by the Cleveland Foundation and Cleveland State University, says Ohio's formula for distributing gasoline taxes back to counties siphons money from the areas that need it the most. State officials contested those claims.

The formula, the report says, treats all counties the same, regardless of population, and fails to take into account the greater traffic counts, vehicle registrations, and gasoline sales in urban and suburban areas.

"The result in Ohio is a spatially skewed pattern of state transportation spending that is essentially anti-city and even anti-suburb," says the report by Brookings' Center on Urban & Metropolitan Policy. "In effect, funds are diverted away from the very places that struggle with the greatest transportation needs and pay the most in gas taxes."

The report is called "Slanted Pavement: How Ohio's Highway Spending Shortchanges Cities and Suburbs" and can be read at www.brookings.edu/urban. It makes the following suggestions:

• Changing the formula of gas tax redistribution by making payouts to local governments proportionate to traffic counts and gasoline consumption.

• Add major arterial roads to the highways that are maintained by the Ohio Department of Transportation. By omitting those roads, which are mostly found in and around cities, the state perpetuates further anti-urban bias.

• Give more highway spending authority to metropolitan planning organizations, which encompass 71 percent of Ohio's population, but only 9 percent of the state's highway construction budget as of 2001.

• Allow a portion of gas tax revenues to be used for mass-transit and other projects, not just highways.

According to its Web site, the Ohio Department of Taxation paid out $1.3 billion in motor vehicle fuel tax collections in fiscal 2001. Of that, 10.1 percent went to municipalities, 8.8 percent to counties and 4.7 percent to townships. The biggest portion, 56.7 percent - or $741 million - went to the Highway Operating Fund controlled by the Transportation Department.

In a breakout of payouts to localities in 2000, each of Ohio's 88 counties received $1.4 million. Gary Gudmundson, a spokesman for the Department of Taxation, said Tuesday that state law gives the department "no discretion" in county apportionments. He did, however, point out that Cuyahoga County, for example, received $23.5 million in 2000 after payouts to Cuyahoga cities and townships are factored in. Hamilton County received $11.6 million. The majority of Ohio counties received totals less than $4 million.

Brian Cunningham, spokesman for the Transportation Department, called the Brookings report "a bit misleading." In particular, he said that under Ohio's policy of "home rule," cities maintain all highways in their jurisdiction except for interstates. Outside of cities, state-financed highway projects are determined by need, not population or traffic counts.

Nonetheless, Ohio cities and suburbs believe their slices of the fuel tax pie are too small. If Gov. Bob Taft's proposed 6-cent fuel tax increase and $5 hike in driver's license and vehicle tag fees go through, Madeira City Manager Tom Moeller would like to see a simultaneous increase in the shares paid to cities and suburbs.

Moeller said Madeira, a city of about 9,000 people, receives about $320,000 a year in fuel tax and motor vehicle registration receipts, but spends more than $500,000 a year on road repairs.

"We have to rely on other funding and revenue sources for maintaining our roads," he said. "We've not been able to provide other services that we would like to provide."

E-mail jmcnair@enquirer.com.