House, Senate seek consent on ever-popular tax cuts

This new week, Ohio’s Republican-run General Assembly might — might — pass a state operating budget for the period ending June 30, 2021. Legislators missed last weekend’s deadline. Result: They passed a temporary budget to fund state agencies through July 17.

Same goes for the separate Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation budget. Legislators passed a temporary budget to operate the bureau through July 31. The nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission explained a key workers’ comp issue this way:

The House’s workers’ comp budget “makes a peace officer, firefighter, or emergency medical worker …diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder

eligible to receive (workers’) compensation … regardless of whether (he or she) suffers an accompanying physical injury.” The Senate’s version doesn’t do that.

Also still pending: The nuclear power plant bailout (HB 6). That make-orbreak June 30 deadline the plants’ owner, Firstenergy Solutions, set for passing HB 6? Rigid as a Slinky – a bluff. The bailout will pass — more than two dozen Statehouse lobbyists are registered to lobby for Firstenergy; or for Firstenergy Solutions; or for owners of Firstenergy Solutions’ bonds. Keep your checkbook handy.

In the House, the proposed operating budget (HB 166) was introduced March 25. The House passed it 45 days later, on May 9. The Senate passed its version 43 days later, on June 20. (In 2017, the House-senate interval was 50 days.) Timing aside, at every stage of budget haggling, the Legislative Service Commission documents each change. Bottom line: A General Assembly member who claims he or she doesn’t know what’s in a budget hasn’t — big surprise — taken the time to read LSC analyses, which are publicly available.

When, as this year, the House and Senate pass different versions of a budget, they appoint a six-member conference committee (three senators, three representatives) to write a compromise.

This year’s budget conferees could wrap up this week. Evidently, the Powers That Be have gotten over one purported interchamber squabble: Whether to use the wording of the Housepassed budget or the wording of the Senate-passed budget as the conference committee’s starting point. If, week before last, legislators really did get their Dockers in a bunch over that, here’s the history: Since at least 2003, budget conferees have started their haggling with the Senate-passed versions of budget bills (that’s documented), and for at least 20 years before that, too (that’s memory).

Naturally, Statehouse Democrats took the expected shots at Republicans for not making the June 30 budget deadline. Fair enough. But what Democrats didn’t say was that the two most recent times the legislature missed the deadline — in 1991 and 2009 — Democrats ran the House, while Republicans ran the Senate. In 1991, the General Assembly passed Ohio’s operating budget 11 days late. In 2009, the General Assembly passed the operating budget 13 days late.

Two factors may figure in this year’s prickly Senatehouse relations. One: The needling that House Speaker Larry Householder, a Perry County Republican, gave Senate Republicans in March — “put on your big-boy pants … pull your binky out of your mouth … you’ve got to make tough decisions” — when GOP senators dithered over a gastax increase that Republican Gov. Mike Dewine wanted and which the House had passed. Legislators eventually agreed to boost Ohio’s gas tax by 10.5 cents a gallon (for diesel fuel, by 19 cents a gallon). The tax increases took effect on Monday.

Another factor: It appears “tax cuts” — headline words every Ohio pol wants voters to see — are among substantive Senate-house differences. Dewine didn’t call for tax cuts, but the House initiated some. Then the Senate initiated more.

Why not? Tax cuts have worked such miracles for Ohioans. In 1985, when Statehouse carnival barkers first touted tax cuts, Ohio’s per capita personal income was 95.6% of average U.S. per capita income. By 2018, after many more grandstanding tax cuts, Ohio’s per capita personal income was 89.82% of the U.S. average, according to the U.S. Regional Economic Analysis Project. That’s what 35 years of budget bluster and tax-cut ballyhoo have accomplished for Ohioans.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com