Ohio lawmakers working to advance local infrastructure bond issue during lame duck session

By: Nick Evans – Ohio Capital Journal

If all goes to plan, lawmakers will be asking Ohio voters next May to renew a multibillion-dollar fund that helps get shovels in the ground for local public works projects like roads and sewers. The State Capital Improvement Program has been around since the late 1980s and offers competitive grants and loans for local governments’ capital projects; money for the program comes from bonds backed by the general revenue fund.

The proposal would extend the State Capital Improvement Program for another 10 years by issuing $2.5 billion in new bonds. Voters have renewed the program three times previously in 1995, 2005, and 2014.

The Senate has already passed its version of the joint resolution to place the measure on the ballot. The House Finance Committee held its first hearing for a companion measure this week.

What the program funds

To get a sense of scale, Ohio Public Works Commission director Linda Bailiff laid out the scope of physical infrastructure the program helps maintain.

“I think it’s over 212,000 lane miles that counties townships and municipalities are responsible for,” she said. “There’s 29,000 bridges, there’s 4,400 public water systems, and 1,000 wastewater systems.”

“And so all of those need attention,” she explained. “Our funds pay for repair, replacement, reconstruction, rehabilitation as well as new (builds) and expansion.”

Since its inception the State Capital Improvement Program has funded 18,860 projects around Ohio.

In the Public Works Commission’s latest report, the agency highlights some of the projects. They range from overhauling a major thoroughfare in Columbus or replacing a bridge in Lorain County to improving sidewalks and curb ramps in the village of Willard.

The Commission also shares a spreadsheet of the 4,000-plus projects the program has supported since 2017. Over that stretch, the program has provided $2.3 billion — $1.5 billion of which came in the form of grants — in support of $5.2 billion-worth of infrastructure improvements around Ohio.

Mahoning County Engineer, and president of the County Engineers Association of Ohio, Patrick Ginnetti was unequivocal in his praise of the program.

“I will say, in my opinion, this is the most successful program the state of Ohio has,” he said.

How it works

Under the program, Ohio is split up by county into 19 districts. The most populous counties are their own districts, and in more sparsely populated regions several counties are lumped together. To get funding, local governments submit proposals within their district which are then scored based on a district-specific set of categories.

“Namely health and safety, the priority needs of that particular district, financial considerations, readiness to proceed, the age and condition of the infrastructure,” Bailiff offered as examples.

Every year district level officials rank their proposals and submit funding recommendations to the Ohio Public Works Commission.

“As long as everything complies with statute,” Bailiff said, “we go ahead and prepare funding agreements that are released about July 1 each year.”

Grant applications can get up to 90% of the project cost covered, so local entities still need to pony up a share of funding. Loans can cover the full project cost, and they’re offered interest free.

Bailiff adds that they’ve got a couple of state-level set aside programs, too. One earmarks $20 million annually for rural villages and townships with a population of less than 5,000. After districts have doled out their award recommendations, they go back through the projects that didn’t get the nod.

“They select up to five projects that did not get funded at the district, that fit that definition of the village or the rural township,” she explained. “And they submit them to the small government administrator to compete on a statewide basis, so they have a second shot at funding.”

The Public Works Commission also has a first come first serve program for emergency work.

How it’s working out

Ginnetti explained his office, like the offices of county engineers around the state, gets its funding from gas taxes.

“With the inception of electric cars, hybrids, CNG vehicles, gas tax has been relatively stagnant,” he said, “so our budgets have been stagnant,”

Ginnetti described the State Capital Improvement Program as a way to “stretch” that budget, and he pointed to his county’s sewer system as an example.

“We’ll utilize the grant funding and also the revolving loan fund to do what is known as sewer re-lining,” he said. “It’s a nondestructive way to give us additional useful life out of our existing gravity sewer.”

“Again, where costs are a certain dollar amount,” he explained, “it helps minimize the impact to our operating budget.”

In the last two years, he said, they’ve paved 25 miles of road, replaced five box culverts and relined 15,000 linear feet of sanitary sewer pipes.

“And it’s a competitive program,” he stressed, “so it’s not like communities are just given a blank check and they say go do what you want.”

Put simply, he described, “good projects get funded; projects that may not be as urgent or as critical do not.”

Ginnetti said his county also got assistance from the emergency funding program after a road subsidence.

“Had the emergency program not been there,” he said, “that would’ve resulted in a road closure — a lengthy road closure — and we probably would’ve had to sacrifice a paving program or several bridges or box culverts to get the road fixed.”

“It’s basically life support,” he added, “for all of the municipalities, townships, county government in Ohio to get work done that we wouldn’t be able to do solely on our operating budget.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.

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Nick Evans

Nick Evans has spent the past seven years reporting for NPR member stations in Florida and Ohio. He got his start in Tallahassee, covering issues like redistricting, same sex marriage and medical marijuana. Since arriving in Columbus in 2018, he has covered everything from city council to football. His work on Ohio politics and local policing have been featured numerous times on NPR.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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