Budget debate will show where pols stand on schools, roads
The Gop-run Ohio Senate last week made a shambles of Republican Gov. Mike Dewine’s proposed highway budget after senators, in effect, debated just how many potholes Ohio drivers might put up with. “A lot,” is the Senate’s answer. So, if you sell shock absorbers or offer wheel alignments, you’re in the money. If you’re an Ohio driver, tough luck.
The Senate approved a 6-cent-per gallon increase in Ohio’s gasoline tax. The governor wanted an 18-cent increase (the first gas tax increase since 2005). Dewine’s 18-cent increase would boost Ohio’s current 28-cents-per-gallon gas tax to 46 cents.
The Senate instead set the new rate to be 34 cents per gallon. Earlier, Ohio’s House voted to set the gas tax at 35 cents per gallon this year, 38.7 cents next year. The bill, House Bill 62, now goes to a Senate-house conference committee.
State senators can daydream about going to Congress. Six of Ohio’s 16 current U.S. House members were once in the Ohio Senate. Ohio’s congressional districts are Gop-rigged. The candidate who wins a congressional primary is all but guaranteed to go to Congress. But if a state senator votes for a gas tax increase that really would fix roads, he or she could be outflanked by an anti-tax candidate in a GOP congressional primary. Result: Mr. Smith doesn’t go to Washington. Can’t have that, can we?
Meanwhile, Statehouse debate on the 2020-21 state operating budget Dewine proposed March 15 — to pay for schools and prisons and Medicaid, and paperclips and copy paper for state offices — has begun. The current budget expires June 30. After the House and Senate each proposes its own rewrite of Dewine’s plan, horse-trading will start in June via Senate-house conference committee (four Republicans and two Democrats).
The conferees, who’ll aim to craft a compromise, are proxies for House Speaker Larry Householder of Perry County’s Glenford and Senate President Larry Obhof of Medina. Once the compromise is OK’D, the General Assembly will sing “Kumbaya,” then head home to brag about their bipartisan statesmanship.
In Act I of the play, some legislators’ Dockers got in a bunch because Dewine’s budget is predicated on economic growth, not on higher income or sales taxes. Somehow, expecting Ohio’s economy to grow spooked some of the same Statehouse Republicans who otherwise sing hosannas to Donald Trump’s economy. Go figure.
Act II followed: The Legislative Service Commission’s estimate of state revenue over the next two years was less than Dewine’s estimate. (A budget is based on revenue estimates.) But LSC and gubernatorial revenue estimates usually do vary. And just before the conference committee starts haggling, the LSC and the state Budget Office, part of the Dewine administration, will revise their respective estimates. Chances are, they’ll be closer than last week’s.
During this year’s budget debate, the elephant in the Statehouse room is state aid for public school. Twenty-two years ago Sunday, on March 24, 1997, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Ohio’s methods of financing public schools are unconstitutional.
Key reason: Overdependence on the property tax. So, the court ruled. “Ohio’s public school financing scheme must undergo a complete systematic overhaul.” Does anybody in Ohio, especially homeowners shouldering property taxes, think that has happened?
The school-funding sections of Dewine’s budget are placeholders because General Assembly members are crafting proposals to address what the Supreme Court ordered in 1997.
Monday, for example, two Ohio House members are expected to unveil a bipartisan plan to address what Ohio needs to do to fairly fund public education for all pupils, whether they live amid poverty or wealth. The two legislators are state Rep. Robert R. Cupp, a Lima Republican and a state Supreme Court justice from 2007 through 2012 — that is, he was a member of the court after it issued the Derolph decision — and state Rep. John Patterson, a Democrat of Ashtabula County’s seat, Jefferson, and a retired American history teacher. Cupp and Patterson’s proposals could lead to concrete Statehouse progress on genuine schoolfunding reform.
That’s way overdue. A generation of young Ohioans has graduated from public school districts that are unconstitutionally underfunded — by a General Assembly whose members have sworn to uphold Ohio’s constitution.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.
tsuddes@ gmail.com.