The U.S. Senate appears poised next week to hand Ohio a $2.2 billion bonus - or possibly more - by increasing its share of revenues from gasoline taxes.

The proposal in the $255 billion highway funding bill, as worked out by Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and James Jeffords, I-Vt., would boost Ohio's share from $5.8 billion to $8 billion. The deal could get even better as the Senate version is reconciled with the House bill, which put Ohio at $9.3 billion.

In reality, it wouldn't be a "bonus." It would simply bring Ohio closer to the funding level it should have had all along.

One of Washington's dirtiest little funding secrets is that Ohio and other Midwestern states have been "donor states," getting back far less than they pay in taxes - and subsidizing the highways of New York and other states. Ohio's return has been 88 cents to 90 cents on the dollar, while New York gets $1.21.

Ohio has been penalized even further - about $150 million a year - for being environmentally conscious by using far more corn-based ethanol than any other state except Illinois and Minnesota. As ethanol is taxed at a lower rate, Ohio gets even less.

This has long been a sore spot with Ohio officials. In his State of the State speech Wednesday, Gov. Bob Taft said it's "high time the federal government stops penalizing Ohio for consuming a cleaner-burning, renewable fuel." Taft's predecessor, now-Sen. George Voinovich, led the fight in the Senate to give Ohio more of a fair shake.

It's about time Congress addressed this glaring inequity, which has hurt Ohio's economy. The state has lost billions of dollars over the 48 years of the Highway Trust Fund with this rigged formula - dollars the state's taxpayers have had to produce instead. Ohio has the nation's fourth-largest interstate network; half the nation's population lives within 600 miles of the state. It is a highway hub, and it has been shortchanged of funds to keep that hub going.

Lawmakers now want to guarantee every state at least a 95-cent return; that would shift funds from Eastern states to the Midwest, South and West. Total equity is impossible, given political pressures and states' needs. But it's time to fix Ohio's dead-end highway funding.