CLEVELAND — As if Mondays aren't bad enough many of you ran into this on your way into work, gas at $5.09 a gallon at several places, oh, and that's the cash price, $5.19 if you're paying by credit.
Jessica Fox pumps with a blind eye.
"I honestly don't look anymore, I don't have a choice, I have to get to work,” Fox said.
The choice some are weighing at the sight of $5 a gallon is whether or not to leave the car parked.
"I'm going to start walking everywhere I go,” said Eric filling up at $5.09.
Hoofing is a cost-saving option so too is public transit.
Fox says though not for her.
"Public transit? I'd have to wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning. There's no way I have to take my daughter all the way to Brunswick and then I come all the way down here for work then I got to go all the way back to Brunswick to pick her back up. It's impossible public transit."
The folks at GasBuddy told News 5 that relief for Fox, Eric and the rest of us is not coming soon.
"Gasoline inventories in the Great Lakes are at their lowest seasonal level on record amidst still strong demand in light of high prices and low supply,” said Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy’s Head of Petroleum Analysis.
Part of what you pay per gallon is the state's sales tax, at 38.5 cents a gallon Ohio's is the seventh highest in the country. The governor of New York last week suspended her state's 16-cent a gallon gas tax through the end of the year to ease the burden on Empire State drivers.
A spokesman for Governor Mike DeWine told News 5 don't look for that here.
"Since Ohio’s Gas Tax funds road improvements and repairs, suspending the gas tax would cut off funding to key Northeast Ohio road projects,” wrote DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney in a statement to News 5.
“The key policy change we need to reduce gasoline prices permanently is to nationally increase refining capacity and reverse other federal energy policy decisions that under President Biden have negatively impacted gasoline prices. Gas tax suspensions may provide temporary relief, but would harm Ohioans in other key ways, such as poorer roads and unfinished construction projects.”
In addition to the state tax, there is also an 18.5 cents a gallon federal gas tax. News 5 asked Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm if Washington should follow New York State's lead and temporarily suspend it.
"You know every state's going to do their own thing and Congress certainly could do that, it's one of the things the president has been weighing // but the bottom line is the president is looking at all of these things, even on a temporary basis to be able to provide relief for people,” said Granholm.
