ST. CLAIRSVILLE — To Belmont County Engineer Terry Lively, the math is simple: Increasing the vehicle registration fee by enacting three $5 levies will provide him with more money to fix county roads and bridges.

But officials also said the math behind complex legislation that would allow Belmont County to raise those fees isn’t so simple, and how much residents will pay when they buy license plates cannot be determined by simple addition alone.

“The estimate that we’ve received shows that if all three are passed, we would collect about $819,000 per year,” Lively said. “If it is passed and done in the next few weeks, we would start collecting the fees in January.

“Our budget is about $5 million per year,” he said. “About half comes from the gas tax and about half from license fees.”

At face value, passing three levies at the county level would appear to mean county residents would pay $15 more per year to keep their Ohio vehicle registration current if commissioners decide to approve the engineer’s request.

But documents provided by the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles indicate that is not necessarily the case. Depending on where in the county a resident lives, the price increase, and how much that would be, varies — even if the county enacts all three levies.

The reason is that Chapter 4504 of Ohio Revised Code also allows townships and incorporated villages and cities to pass taxes on vehicle registrations. And although the state provides nine different $5 levies under the permissive tax code, the county cannot collect certain $5 fees if a township or municipal taxing district has passed levies that cancel out those the county can pass.

The county has had one of its available $5 levies in place since the late 1960s, which is when the state first allowed local taxing bodies to charge those fees, Lively said. All Belmont County residents pay at least $5 more than the state base rates of $34.50 for passenger cars and $49.50 for trucks.

Last week, the county commission had the first of two public hearings it must hold to pass the three additional levies. The board will hold the second public hearing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Belmont County Commissioner J.P. Dutton said the board would consider passing the levies after that hearing.

“Anytime after the second public hearing, it can be voted on,” said Dutton. “We will go through the meeting next week and give it full thought. At the end of the day, we are looking for a way to improve roads and infrastructure in Belmont County.”

But some taxing districts have additional fees. Some of those, such as Barnesville, also have been trying to increase the amount they collect on vehicle registrations. When the state gave counties the ability to pass a fourth $5 levy last year, it also put a cap of five on the number of levies within a taxing district beginning in January 2019, according to state documents. The previous cap was four levies.

The state provides one levy to each taxing body that it can pass without interfering with other levies, according to information from the BMV. That means any given taxing district can have as much as a $25 upcharge on vehicle license plates, which would bring the total to $59.50 for cars and $74.50 for trucks.

Still, some of the levies at the township and municipal levels cancel out those at the county level, with the money going to the townships and municipalities first. If those taxing bodies are able to pass additional levies before the county can pass them, then they could reduce the amount the county can collect. But, they also can affect the price increase of a vehicle’s registration.

“Plenty of towns and townships have already taken advantage of it,” Lively said.

The levies themselves also determine how much one taxing body can take from the revenue the levy generates, according to the state documents. For example, if counties pass the levy under Ohio Revised Code Section 4504.24, the county gets 100 percent of the revenue it generates no matter what levies a township or incorporated city or village has passed. But if a county passes 4504.15, then the county must split its revenue with either the municipality or township in which the vehicle is registered. If a municipality has passed 4504.17, then the county cannot collect under 4504.15 at all.

State Rep. Jack Cera, D-Bellaire, said he believes the state legislature gave counties the ability to pass the additional levy last year because commissioners statewide had lobbied for a levy they could pass that would not interfere with the other levies.

“There was a debate on that,” Cera said. “I believe it was set up that way as a way of sharing revenue with the understanding that just because someone lives in a municipality, they still drive on other roads.”

But Cera also said he believes the legislation is complicated.

“This could all be avoided if Congress would get their act together and pass federal highway legislation,” he said. “I think local governments have grown tired of inaction by Congress, and we need bipartisan legislation to bring some of the oil and gas money back to Eastern Ohio.”

The Race for Funding

Meanwhile, with the county attempting to collect all three of its remaining available levies, some townships and municipalities are trying to pass their own levies first in order to get a bigger piece of the pie.

Barnesville Village Council is scheduled to hold the third reading of a municipal license plate fee increase during its 7 p.m. meeting Monday.

Village Administrator Roger Deal said if the measure is approved, it will be the third $5 levy its council has passed. Council passed two of those $5 levies decades ago. Deal said both were in place prior to his 25 years of service to the community, where he was a council member before he assumed his current position.

“We have had two fees for a number of years, and we can have as many as three,” said Deal. “Council chose to take advantage of the third one.

“We have a constant battle with the roads, trying to keep up the streets,” he said.

Deal also said heavy truck traffic that arrived with the oil and natural gas industries compounded the problem the village already had with its roads.

But Lively said the county needs money for its roads and bridges, too — particularly since it has not passed an increase in the license plate fee in nearly half a century.

“The cost of materials, labor, equipment — they have all gone up, while our revenue has remained flat,” Lively said.

“The $5 we are collecting today is the same amount we were collecting in 1969,” he added. “It goes nowhere near as far now.”

Belmont County officials aren’t the only ones in the Ohio Valley who have been talking recently about raising the license plate fee the county can collect.

In Monroe County, Engineer Amy Zwick asked commissioners in April to approve one $5 levy, which would have raised the price for registering a vehicle from $39.50 to $44.50 per year.

“I have been asking for additional funding for the engineer’s office, and this is a way I could get more money for it,” Zwick told the board at its April 23 meeting. “Money has been lacking. Bridges and roads are in terrible conditions and they need to be fixed.”

Zwick said the fee hike would generate about $100,000 to help fix roads and bridges. The April 23 session included the first of two public hearings on the matter. But following a second hearing on April 30, the commissioners voted unanimously against the proposed increase.

Commissioner Mick Schumacher said he and fellow Commissioners Tim Price and Carl Davis voted it down because they felt the public was opposed to the increase.

Still, neither Harrison County nor the village of Cadiz have made any recent attempts to pass additional permissive tax levies.

County Commissioners Don Bethel and Paul Coffland both said Friday that the county is not considering any increase, although they did not know the current fee structure for various areas of the county. Cadiz Mayor Ken Zitko also said the village is not considering any increase in the license plate fee.

Employees at the Harrison County Deputy Registrar License Agency for the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Cadiz said Friday its residents pay the state’s base rate for registering vehicles.

Jefferson County Engineer Jim Branagan also said he is not asking his county’s commissioners to increase the license plate fee right now.

“I tried that back in the early 1990s,” said Branagan. “But, the commissioners didn’t approve it.

Lively said flooding and landslides following heavy rain in February have caused significant damage to county roads. Although the county will get federal funding to help with the cost of the repairs, the county needs to be able to match a portion of those funds.

“I am probably going to have to spend most of that $819,000 to get matching funds to repair the slips and landslides we’ve had this year,” Lively said. “Fulton Hill Road, west of Bellaire, has been closed because of a big slip up there. We’re probably looking at $300,000 of work on that, or more. I have no money for that.”

In Barnesville, Deal said the village’s two levies have generated about $20,000 a year for the village. He expects the third to yield another $10,000, for a total of $30,000 annually.

He also said there are limits on ways that the village can use those funds. They can be used for road and bridge work, but the funds cannot be used to pave dead-end streets. Any street that is paved with these funds also must lead to a county road.

And even though the village has its own levies, Deal said the money is controlled by county engineer. Deal said the village must go through an application process to receive its share of the funding. The county engineer approves or rejects those project applications. If he approves, Deal said county commissioners then can approve the payment and authorize the release of a check.

“He collects and keeps track of those fees,” said Deal of Lively. “We receive a letter once year saying how much is available, but we can leave it there and let it build. When we use that money, we usually utilize it as matching funds for larger grants — so we turn $60,000 into $500,000 to pave a lot of streets that are deteriorating.”

Recognizing the Need

Even though some municipalities are trying to get more money before the county takes its whole share, some officials support Lively’s effort to get more money for county roads.

Pultney Township Trustee Frank Shaffer, also president of the Belmont County Township Trustees Association, said he and other trustees are endorsing the proposed increases and supporting Lively in his efforts to pass three additional levies.

“The engineer’s department needs an increase in its budget to maintain services,” said Shaffer, who also said his county imposes two permissive tax levies for a total fee of $10. “They need upfront money for (Federal Emergency Management Agency) projects right now to cover matching costs.”

Shaffer said he believes Lively does have a plan to kick back some of the funds that would be generated by the county increases in the license plate fee, but that is not the reason they are endorsing the hike.

“We are not endorsing this for our budget,” he said. “(Lively) needs it for his budget. He is in worse shape now than us.”

Still, Shaffer said, many townships “are a mess” because the state has reduced its funding to townships and municipalities during the past decade.

Pease Township Trustee Mike Bianconi also said he believes the county engineer needs the extra revenue.

“The price of everything goes up, and the license plate fee increase has been talked about for years,” said Bianconi, who noted his township has two permissive tax levies with a total fee of $10. “I support it.. … The price of material has skyrocketed through the years. They’ve cut employees and need money to operate.

“This money won’t solve everything, but it will be a boost to their operations,” he said.

Jennifer Compston-Strough, Casey Junkins, Joselyn King and Miranda Sebroski contributed to this report.