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Funding slashed in Ohio budget

Legislators agree to cut thousands of state jobs, remove tuition caps and reduce spending on programs

By Julie Carr Smyth and Stephen Majors
Associated Press

Published on Tuesday, Jul 14, 2009

COLUMBUS: After months of slow, often secretive legislative deliberations and an 11th-hour stalemate, Ohio lawmakers passed the $51 billion state budget Monday with surprising haste.

All but the most basic details were blurred by the sheer speed of being whisked through a key committee and two floor votes in less than a day: It does contain Gov. Ted Strickland's landmark public education overhaul and his controversial moneymaking proposal to legalize slots-like video lottery terminals.

Disagreement over how to raise the money to fill a $3.2 billion revenue hole caused lawmakers to miss the June 30 budget deadline for the first time in 18 years.

The rancor obscured much of the pain the budget ultimately delivered.

House Finance Chairman Vernon Sykes, D-Akron, estimated 2,000 to 3,000 state workers will lose their jobs as a result of the cuts. Tuition at public colleges and universities was unfrozen. Public libraries, escaping worse cuts, lost $84 million. Agency budgets were slashed by nearly $1.4 billion and state Medicaid spending was reduced $770 million, affecting government services
and programs across the state.

Joel Potts, director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors' Association, said the cuts ''are far more catastrophic than anybody thought they'd be and will have a long-term devastating effect on those most in crisis. I honestly don't know how we're going to meet demand.''

House Minority Leader William Batchelder, R-Medina, said Strickland and Democratic lawmakers provided a budget with no lasting solutions. He called the bill ''a bandage to stop the bleeding.''

The teachers' unions saw a bright spot in the across-the-board cuts: the passage of Strickland's so-called ''evidence-based model'' that would include all-day kindergarten, smaller classes and replacement of the Ohio Graduation Test.

School districts cut

Under the new school-funding formula, state aid to districts is reduced a quarter percent this budget cycle. But one-time federal stimulus dollars allow for a 5.5 percent overall increase in education spending in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. Charter schools will be funded similarly to traditional public schools and will be subject to new performance report cards.

''This summer will be remembered in history as the beginning of a transformation of public education in Ohio to meet the challenges of the 21st century,'' OEA President Patricia Frost-Brooks said.

Others will remember the summer differently — for an ugly budget impasse and a questionable expansion of gambling that marked a political reversal for Strickland.

''Some of the biggest losers, if this budget is actually executed as proposed here, are going to be some poor people in this state who are going to be encouraged to gamble their money away rather than use it to improve their job skills by going to school,'' state Rep. Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster, said after casting the lone committee vote against the bill Monday.

The conference committee passed the bill in about 30 minutes, though it had been allowed to go two weeks past its deadline and five months past its introduction.

The slots plan that broke a logjam between Strickland and Senate Republicans called for raising $933 million by expanding the Ohio Lottery to allow video lottery terminals at seven horse racetracks. The governor signed an executive order Monday laying out the details: Licenses will cost $65 million for 10 years for as many as 2,500 machines, and each vendor must invest at least $100 million in facilities upgrades and security.

The rest of the state's $3.2 billion budget deficit will be addressed through cuts to state programs or accounting maneuvers, which enabled lawmakers to give more money back to popular programs, such as libraries, than Strickland recommended.

The final compromise also scraps moneymaking ideas to reduce the amount the state contributes to the largest public employee pension fund and to allow natural gas drilling in state parks.

COLUMBUS: After months of slow, often secretive legislative deliberations and an 11th-hour stalemate, Ohio lawmakers passed the $51 billion state budget Monday with surprising haste.

Get the full article here.


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