YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Local governments fear what will happen to northern Ohio's township, city and county roads and the condition of the Ohio Turnpike if a plan by Gov. John Kasich to sell or lease the turnpike comes to fruition, representatives said Thursday.
County commissioners and executives from five counties in Northeast Ohio banded together on the issue and announced they will put resources into studying the effects of privatizing the James W. Shocknessy Ohio Turnpike on local economies, roads and the turnpike itself.
"The Ohio Turnpike is a tremendous asset; it is not an asset of the state of Ohio though to be bought and sold or leased," Mahoning County Commissioner John McNally said at a press conference in the county courthouse.
McNally pointed out that no state revenue funds have ever been appropriated by the state to support the turnpike, and that it is funded by tolls paid by users, as well as revenues from shops in the rest areas that line it.
The first leg of the 241-mile turnpike started in Mahoning County and went through Portage County in 1949. The project was completed by 1955 with more than $3.2 million in revenue bonds issued from the Ohio Turnpike Commission to build the turnpike.
Studies by the Ohio Department of Transportation and state are underway to determine if selling or leasing the turnpike is a good option for the state and easing its $4 billion deficit.
Believing a Kasich administration-funded study will produce the results the governor wants and ignore the pitfalls to local governments affected by the turnpike, Ed Fitzgerald, Cuyahoga County executive, decided to dedicate his office's resources to his own study.
"We're not going to sit here and take [the state's study] as an established fact," Fitzgerald said. "We're going to do our own studies."
A month ago, Fitzgerald and McNally began conversations about their opposition to selling the turnpike and enlisted commissioners from Lorain and Trumbull counties and Russ Pry, Summit County executive, to join in the discussion.
"We don't just want to be on the receiving end of whatever schemes the Kasich administration ends up dreaming up," Fitzgerald said.
Mahoning County Commissioners Anthony Traficanti and Carol Rimedio-Righetti, Lorain County Commissioner Ted Kalo and state Rep. Ron Gerberry, D-59 Austintown, joined Fitzgerald, McNally and Pry at the Thursday afternoon news conference to announce the group and its plan to study the issue in order to form a final consensus on behalf of all 13 counties the turnpike goes through.
"We have to decide collectively -- all of these counties -- whether or not we want to wait and take whatever it is they're going to give us or whether we're really going to demand to have a seat at the table," Fitzgerald said.
Commissioners from Lucas County are also interested in contributing to the group, and McNally called for other northern Ohio county commissions to voice opposition to the plan as well.
Fitzgerald expects some of the smaller counties to join the group within the next few days.
The turnpike runs from the west state line of Ohio starting in Williams County, where the Indiana Turnpike ends, to Mahoning County, where Interstate 76 meets the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the east state line. Along the way, the turnpike goes through Fulton, Lucas, Wood, Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie, Lorain, Cuyahoga, Summit, Portage and Trumbull counties.
"This conversation started locally but we're starting to build bridges and connections to each other to respond to this initiative by the Kasich administration," Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald plans to hold a series of committee or task force meetings throughout the month of February while his staff begins digging into the problem. He hopes to have a final report released by June or July, when the state's report will be released.
Gerberry is trying to rally fellow state legislators against Kasich's plan without much luck, due to the turnpike being primarily a northern Ohio issue, and he said his Republican colleagues consistently vote in favor of Kasich.
"I've introduced a piece of legislation which would prohibit the sale or lease," Gerberry said. "Obviously, considering that the administration appears to be very favorable to doing this, that piece of legislation has not gone anywhere."
A lifelong Austintown resident, Gerberry became visibly heated as he spoke during Thursday's press conference, saying the people of Columbus and Cincinnati don't "give a damn about that road."
"As those tolls go up and the quality of the road goes down, who's the winner?" Gerberry asked. "Certainly won't be Ohio."