Now that Ohio’s “rainy day fund” has reached its ceiling, Mount Vernon Mayor Matt Starr thinks the money that would have gone into that fund should go back to local governments. It’s important enough that he plans to do some lobbying for it.
“And I know that the Ohio Municipal League is certainly behind that,” Starr said.
When cities and villages received funding from the state, it was considered especially useful because it was unrestricted funding so the municipalities and villages could determine how to use it.
“In our case, I think we used a lot of it in the past for paving because other than that, our paving budget comes from the gas tax,” he said.
Mount Vernon has approximately 92 miles of combined streets and state routes within city limits, with a little more than 77 miles of that being city streets.
“The amount of money that we get in paving generally paid for about maybe a mile, a little more than a mile each year. So that just doesn’t cut it from the gas tax,” Starr said.
He wants the state to strongly consider getting the funding to local governments back up to a “respectable part” of the General Fund at the state level while maintaining that those funds are unrestricted with no strings attached.
