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The Ohio House concluded its active legislative voting sessions at just before 4 AM Friday morning, June 4.  The Ohio Senate concluded at a similar time. A schedule has been announced for the second half of 2010, that calls for several weeks of active voting sessions after the November 2 general election. The schedule is available here.

 

Ron's Journal Archive

Shifting from one tax increase to another

10/2/2009

Let's examine some useful facts in our current discussion about the Governor’s two tax proposals --  First the growing awareness that the attempt to expand gambling by changing the Ohio Lottery to include electronic slot machines is not a wise path on which to continue and second the proposal to retroactively raise the  state income tax rates this year and next by 4.2 percent:

  1. The fact remains that the recently-enacted state budget authorizes total spending to increase $3. 5 billion this new fiscal year over last. And next year it is authorized to increase another $900 million over this year. That is a $4.4 billion spending increase that is authorized compared to last year. That is a 7.8 percent increase over last year.
  2. While it is true that significant areas of the budget must be considered as special cases when balancing the budget, such as debt service payments and federal matching funds, our House Republican team looks forward to working with the governor and our legislative colleagues to find the spending restraints that will save the $851.5 million that would otherwise be increased spending.
  3. Another little known fat: School aid was NOT increased at all by the additional appropriation of $851.5 million at the end of the budget-making process.  In fact, GRF foundation aid to schools was reduced $959.3 million from the Senate-passed version.  This means that the money that is constitutionally required to go to schools from expanded “lottery” profits actually was displaced in the final budget to shore up spending outside of state aid to primary and secondary education.
  4. The Governor’s assertion that the failure of his gambling proposal to generate the expected revenues would only hurt school aid is nothing more than a scare tactic. The same shell game that displaced GRF support to schools can be fixed now by reversing the flow of funds out of the school foundation line item. This approach will avoid the total weight of the shortfall falling on school aid.
  5. The effect of reversing the displacement funding opens up the entire operating budget to potentially share in the belt tightening that can occur to make up the $851.5 million.

Paid for by Citizens For Amstutz, Matthew Hochstetler Treasurer, 4456 Woodlake Trail, Wooster, OH 44691