How Ohio’s budget affects your wallet
The Ohio Senate unveiled its proposed version of the state budget bill on Tuesday. Previous plans from Gov. Mike DeWine and House Republicans were worth following. But it’s the Senate’s version of the budget that sets the final terms of the debate. The Senate provides a clearer picture of what the finished product might include – or at least what horse trading will look like.
The bill funds state operations for the next two years and calls for spending $60 billion of tax dollars. But as always, it’s also stuffed with myriad policy initiatives because it is a moving train lawmakers try to hitch their pet ideas to.
The budget clock is ticking
We’re expecting the Senate to pass a final budget bill in the next couple of weeks. Then, the House and Senate will pick a team of negotiators to hash out a final version before a June 30 deadline. Finally, DeWine can decide what budget items he wants to keep and what he wants to veto.
Tax cut for $100,000 and up earners
Once again, Senate Republicans want to cut the state’s income tax as they work toward a long-term goal of eliminating it completely.
But for the most part, only those who fall in the state’s top one-fifth of earners would see a cut if this plan makes it into law.
Currently, there are two state income tax brackets. People who make between $26,050 and $100,000 pay 2.75% of their income to the state. People who make more than $100,000 pay 3.5% of that money. Those who make below $26,050 don’t pay anything.
The Senate bill would gradually eliminate the 3.5% bracket, setting a flat tax rate of 2.75% and delivering a tax cut of at least $750 to anyone who makes more than $100,000. About 1.2 million tax filers – or 21% of all state tax filers – would benefit.
$600 million for the Cleveland Browns
The Senate plan performs another bit of budgeting magic by conjuring up a new way to give the Cleveland Browns $600 million for a new stadium.
Senate leaders want to raid the state’s Unclaimed Funds fund – a $4.8 billion pot of money that includes abandoned bank accounts, uncashed checks and other forgotten sums of money. Senate leaders said only money that’s been unclaimed for more than a decade would be taken by the state. This is a change from the status quo since currently, money sits in the fund forever.
The state often taps unclaimed funds to help fill budgeting gaps. But observers couldn’t recall such a large or prominent example in recent history.
Senate leaders described the move as a way to fund Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s plans to build a new domed stadium in Brook Park while not affecting the state’s larger financial picture.
Part of the money would go into a larger stadium fund that could be tapped in the future by the Cincinnati Bengals and other sports franchises who may reach with their hands out to the state. Senate leaders said the Browns’ share of the money would be repaid by future tax revenues associated with the stadium project.
The plan differs from the governor’s plan to pay for the project by hiking taxes on sports betting and the House plan that would borrow money against projected future tax revenues associated with the stadium.
It notably shows both legislative chambers and the governor all support the idea of spending hundreds of millions of dollars in public money to pay for a football stadium. They just disagree about how to pay for it.
House Speaker Matt Huffman praised his Senate counterparts for the idea on Wednesday.
“I think it’s clever. It’s inventive. It almost makes me wish I had thought of it first, to be honest with you,” Huffman said. He clarified that his praise of the plan doesn’t constitute an official endorsement.
K-12 school funding gets a small boost
The Senate plan allocates about $8.3 billion annually to the state’s K-12 schools – slightly more than the House budget and $200 million more than the $8.1 billion that schools are set to receive this year. Some of the money will be allocated to school districts based on their performance in the state’s school rating system, McColley said.
The Senate proposal, like the House plan, would force schools to return any extra money in their general fund to local taxpayers. The Senate set the “carryover cap” limit at 50% of the amount the school spent on its annual operating budget. That’s higher than the 30% limit the House had set.
Under the House budget plan, 485 of the state’s 611 school districts would have had to issue a tax refund, adding up to a $4.2 billion tax cut, according to legislative leaders
The Senate plan will affect 292 school districts, adding up to a $1.7 billion tax cut.
Medicaid cuts are on the table
The Senate’s budget calls for spending an average of $20.3 billion annually on Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. The program is a top expense for the state and federal government, which jointly pay for it.
That’s slightly more than the $20.8 billion the state is budgeted to spend on the program this year. But it’s an average of $600 million less a year than the House budget plan calls for spending. In other words, state officials were preparing for increased costs in the program, and the Senate budget cuts funding below that level.
Part of the Senate’s plan to make up those costs is to force the nearly 1 million Ohioans who get Medicaid through the Barack Obama-era expansion to prove their eligibility every six months instead of every year.
In theory, this wouldn’t change the size of the Medicaid-eligible population. However, it also makes it more likely someone might make a mistake that could cause the state to kick them off their health insurance plan, like missing something in the mail or forgetting to report wage and hour information to the state.
Budget forecasters say this will increase the state’s administrative costs but likely decrease Medicaid enrollment. They didn’t provide specific data.
Senate President Rob McColley said he doesn’t know how many would lose Medicaid coverage out of the change. When asked whether asking for wage and hour reports from millions of people every six months is too much reporting, he said no and framed the change as a means to control the program’s expanding costs and get people off Medicaid who don’t qualify.
Opioid recovery money would be reduced
As part of the state’s response to an opioid crisis still killing thousands each year, the Ohio Department of Health’s current budget includes $8.1 million in funding for chronic disease, injury prevention and drug overdose.
Gov. Mike DeWine at first proposed an increase to about $12 million per year, which included an extra $1 million per year to help different departments create a “comprehensive system of care for patients who present in health systems with addiction” and another $250,000 per year to support harm reduction efforts to decrease risks of overdose or death associated with drug use.
Lawmakers had other ideas. First, the House proposed cutting the budget to about $5 million. The Senate went further, down to about $2 million.
Gone are some tax breaks, including for juke box purchases
The Senate’s budget whizzes helped pay for the tax cut by proposing the elimination of some of the state’s motley hodgepodge of special tax exemptions. Potential casualties include current exemptions on:
- Property companies buy to build new data centers
- Campaign contributions to political candidates
- Juke box purchases
The Senate budget also axed a House budget proposal that would create a $750 state tax deduction for donations to pregnancy resource centers, which discourage pregnant women from seeking abortions.
Family feud
The Ohio Democratic Party’s executive committee will meet in Columbus next Tuesday to pick a new party leader.
Two frontrunning candidates, former state representative Kathleen Clyde and state Sen. Bill DeMora, are touting their support from internal party leaders in the race’s home stretch.
DeMora sent an email to party insiders on Wednesday touting backing from former Gov. Ted Strickland and Chris Redfern, who led the party during Strickland’s time in office and during Barack Obama’s victories here in 2008 and 2012.
His email also listed new endorsements from 28 of the committee’s 147 members – none of whom are household names, although elected officials include Franklin County Commission John O’Grady and state Rep. Sean Brennan, of Parma.
Clyde meanwhile recently touted a list of her own supporters in emails to Democratic Party leaders and on social media. A notable backer is Joe Rugola, executive director of OAPSE/ASFME, an influential labor union of government and school workers. Others include Tony Totty, president of the United Autoworkers chapter in Toledo and Taylor Sappington, the elected city auditor in Nelsonville who is a secretary with the state party. Clyde’s most notable supporter is former senator Sherrod Brown, who party members widely hope will run for governor or U.S. Senate.
The three other candidates are Tamie Wilson, a former congressional candidate from Delaware County, Greene County Democratic Party Chair Kim McCarthy and Kyle Herman, a member of Stow City Council.
In an interview, Herman described what he sees as a fluid race and said he may end up teaming up with McCarthy at next Tuesday’s meeting to either try to win the race or at least convince the winner to back a slate of reforms to the way the party operates.
“We’re in a five way race where there is a real possibility that no one is going to go in with majority support,” he said. “…And we’ve been asking people to keep an open mind until after the candidate forums and then talk with us.”
