Republicans duel over what's in next budget
Wimbledon looms, and that’s a rough schematic of the emerging duel between Statehouse Republicans over what is in — and what isn’t in — Ohio’s next budget.
The House has lobbed its version to the Senate. The Senate will lob its version back to the House. Then both chambers will send the bill to a House-Senate conference. If the past is a prologue, Ohio should have a new budget on or by July 1. That’s a Monday this year, so weekend sessions are possible.
The state Senate, led by President Larry Obhof, a Medina Republican, unveiled its rewrite (or “substitute”) of the proposed state budget, House Bill 166, on Tuesday. Even someone with amnesia could have predicted that Republicans, who’ve run the Senate for 34 consecutive years, would ballyhoo tax cuts. That promise won the state Senate for the GOP in November 1984. Tuesday’s press conference by Senate Repub
licans almost certainly aimed to get the phrase “tax cut” or some version of those words in headlines — and did. Among other features,
the Senate’s version of the budget would sluice more state aid to high-income suburban school districts than the House’s budget did. That irked House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry County’s Glenford. The landmark lawsuit that overturned Ohio’s school funding “system” as an unconstitutionally property-wealth dependent — decided 22 years ago, never implemented — originated in Perry County. Householder described Republican senators’ school aid plan as a “sort of a rob from the poor and give to the rich kind of thing.” (And all this time GOP bystanders have claimed that the Democrats were the party of wealth redistribution.)
And Senate Republicans also want to leave in place a sweet deal for self-employed Ohioans originated during Republican Gov. John R. Kasich’s tenure. The first $250,000 of any self-employment income an Ohioan has is exempt from Ohio’s income tax. That’s a lush bonanza for self-employed lawyers, accountants and other professionals. The House in contrast wants to trim that exemption.
Beyond the grand-prize items – tax breaks, school
money for suburbia — Ohio’s state budgets also resemble a pinata stuffed with prizes that, in themselves, benefit very specific people and places.
Thanks to a Senate amendment, for example, the budget would provide $300,000 each in state aid to Dayton’s Victoria Theater and the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery.
On the debit side of the ledger, the budget — as proposed by Senate Republicans — would further chip away at Ohio’s open-meetings and open-records law.
Background: Led off by Columbus entrepreneur Leslie H. Wexner and his wife, Abigail, philanthropies helped fund the National Veterans Museum and Memorial in Columbus on the Scioto River’s west bank. (The architecturally notable museum
sits on the site of the now-demolished Franklin County Veterans Memorial and its auditorium.)
In addition to gifts from private donors, the state of Ohio kicked in money for the new Museum and Memorial (total not immediately available). And the Franklin County commis
sioners appoint five of the museum’s trustees. A 2014 state law authorized the Museum and Memorial’s creation. That 2014 law also specifically requires meetings of the museum’s trustees to comply with Ohio’s open-meetings and open-record law.
But the state Senate’s rewrite of the pending state budget repeals those “sunshine law” requirements and says meetings of the Museum and Memorial’s board would
“records of the board and the corporation” are
lic records. If the Museum and Memorial is supposed just another nonprofit (sunshine laws don’t generally apply to them), you have to wonder: (1) In 2014, why did the legislature think otherwise? And (2), What’s changed?
Thanks to a Senate amendment, for example, the budget would provide $300,000 each in state aid to Dayton’s Victoria Theater and the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery. On the debit side of the ledger, the budget would further chip away at Ohio’s open-meetings and openrecords law.