Ohio’s piggy bank has fattened under DeWine

You have to wonder if the Statehouse debate on Ohio’s pending state budget — for the two years beginning July 1 — will produce a Spring Surprise.

Any officeholder, including Gov. Mike DeWine and General Assembly incumbents, would rather say “yes” than “no” at budget time, especially when she or he will be seeking re-election in 2022. And it looks like Ohio’s gravy boat is running over.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly — 24 years and counting — still hasn’t fixed school funding. And it still hasn’t fully repealed House Bill 6, which continues to force Ohio’s electricity consumers to subsidize two coal-burning power plants (one, in Indiana).

On that front, Ohio consumers may care to know that Columbus-based American Electric Power Co. and Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. were among 55 corporations that “paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year,” according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington think-tank.

Ohio’s state finances are in more-than-decent shape. For the seven months ending Feb. 28 — latest data available at deadline — state tax receipts were $1.3 billion (or 8.3%) more than during the comparable 2019-2020 period. And total revenue, including federal grants, was $2.3 billion, or 10.1% more than the comparable 2019-2020 period — amid the worst pandemic in more than 100 years.

Meanwhile, year-to-date spending from the General Revenue Fund, Ohio’s checking account, was nearly flat. It rose only 0.4% over the same seven-month period. Yet for 12 months through February, the Consumer

Price Index, all items, “increased 1.7% before seasonal adjustment,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

So, Ohio’s piggy bank has fattened under DeWine. That may seem paradoxical, given COVID19. But as a very shrewd bystander recently said, voters may forget DeWine furloughed about 16,000 non-union state employees last year for 10 workdays — “the equivalent of a 3.8% pay cut,” cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported. Earlier, DeWine cut state agencies’ spending. And Ohio’s “rainy day” budget fund, which totals almost $2.7 billion, remains untouched.

There are pluses and minuses to having a big cache of spending money. As noted, politicians would rather say yes than no. But a governor’s toughest financial duty may be the most critical, to say “no” to a legislator who thinks Ohio taxpayers should fund, say, a new horseshoe pit (including a bronze plaque ballyhooing that great legislator’s name).

Typically, legislative brainstorms are much pricier than that, or start out, like Ohio’s charter schools, as “pilot projects” that balloon in successive budgets into must-fund entitlements.

In that connection, a minor Statehouse mystery of the last six months or so is the sudden scuttling, by the Senate, of a school funding plan that looked as if it might actually comply with the 1997 Ohio Supreme Court school funding order. The House passed it, the Senate didn’t, and the 20192020 session ended on Dec. 31, killing all pending measures.

You have to wonder if in the back of some sly Statehouse mind was a hunch that, pandemic or not, there might be extra cash sloshing around in the state’s checking account when — complete coincidence! — DeWine and the General Assembly would be crafting a twoyear budget whose spending (another darn coincidence!) would kick in during Campaign ’22.

And if perchance that spending could be packaged as getting Ohio’s public schools closer to school-funding Nirvana? And if — also — General Assembly incumbents will be running in redrawn districts? The pending budget, funded with help from the state revenue bump Mike DeWine has banked in Ohio’s treasury, might just script another GOP sweep of Ohio’s Statehouse in November 2022.

‘Politicians would rather say yes than no. But a governor’s toughest financial duty may be the most critical, to say “no” to a legislator who thinks Ohio taxpayers should fund, say, a new horseshoe pit (including a bronze plaque ballyhooing that great legislator’s name).’