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Gambling still option for education funding
By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, Nov 16, 2008
COLUMBUS: Gov. Ted Strickland, who will hold the first of six forums on school funding Thursday in Columbus, is going to need a high school football field full of money to fundamentally change the way Ohio pays to educate 1.8 million schoolchildren.
Unfortunately, the state is squeezed for cash.
Twice since signing his initial two-year budget in late June 2007, Strickland has been forced to reduce spending because the money from taxes did not come into the state as predicted by his budget gurus.
In January, Strickland announced he was cutting $733 million. In September, he ordered an additional $540 million reduction.
At the same time, Strickland's Office of Budget and Management told the governor the projections for tax revenue were too optimistic. New, lower numbers were rolled out. These are called revised estimates.
A month later, the revised estimates for tax receipts were down another 6 percent.
The two best ''real time'' indicators of the economy, according to the budget office, are personal income taxes and nonauto sales taxes.
Personal income taxes were down $66.7 million for the month and nonauto sales taxes were off by $45.1 million.
Remember, these are revised estimates, lowered expectations that came in even worse than anticipated.
Now the governor can do all the listening and talking in the world during his school-funding reform tour, but the bottom line is, the system cannot be fixed without the state spending more money and depending less on local property taxes.
Strickland, unlike his predecessors George Voinovich and Bob Taft, appears to be sincere about addressing school funding, but he also has proven to be a pragmatic leader who is not going to commit political suicide.
And a proposed tax increase, especially in the two-year session when Democrats have recaptured the majority, would damage not only the governor, but also the entire party's fortunes in 2010.
There are at least two places for the governor to look for money — and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars each year — while staying true to the thou-shalt-not-raise-taxes commandment.
A study conducted about two years ago by Howard Fleeter, a private-sector numbers-cruncher with Driscoll & Fleeter in Columbus, looked at the potential savings in gradually and systematically moving more senior citizens into less-expensive in-home care and out of costlier nursing homes.
Fleeter said Friday the report is a little dusty, but when it was completed, Ohio ranked 49th among all states for use of Medicaid dollars for in-home and community-based care for
the elderly. Mississippi was 50th.
At the time, Ohio was spending about 71 percent of its long-term budget on nursing-home care and 29 percent on in-home care.
In the last budget, more money was put into in-home care, so the state's ranking improved slightly, he said.
Fleeter ran simulations for the report, including a model to resemble the long-care programs operated in Oregon and Washington, leaders among the states for use of Medicaid dollars for in-home care.
Using Oregon's program, Ohio could serve 40,000 more senior citizens and still save $600 million a year, Fleeter reported.
The state's population is aging, so Strickland must prepare to serve more people in the coming years while trying to reduce spending on elderly care.
Fleeter said an effort to save $600 million cannot be accomplished during one two-year budget cycle because the infrastructure for in-home care is not in place to support a rapid movement of the elderly out of nursing homes.
Over a period of years, however, the savings could be realized.
Strickland's school-funding plan, like Rome, isn't going to be rebuilt in a day, so projected savings in elderly care could be used to offset annual increases in state funding for education.
Long a powerful lobbying force at the Statehouse, the nursing-home industry no doubt will weigh in heavily on any efforts to transform the current system, but there already are discussions to forge a compromise that would increase the industry's per-bed reimbursements in return for fewer beds and more in-home care.
The second place for Strickland is a gamble, literally.
Since 1990, Ohioans have rejected efforts to create casinos four times, including the most recent ballot issue on Nov. 4.
So it may sound crazy for Strickland to pursue an amendment to the Ohio Constitution to create casino gambling in the state, but he may have few or no other choices.
He is not adverse to expanding gambling in the state, creating keno through the Ohio Lottery Commission. Early returns from the new games are lower than expected.
In concert with an effort to fix school funding, Strickland may have a solid argument for casinos.
He would need to convince voters that the money would go toward education, which would be no easy feat, considering the electorate's attitudes toward similar promises about lottery funds.
So the governor would need to make a bold move, such as earmarking lottery and casino profits into a separate education budget created by an amendment to the Ohio Constitution so future governors and legislatures could not tamper with the money.
This would not be enough to fund education, so there would have to be at least a third funding source, such as a percentage of state income-tax revenues, earmarked for education.
He could also promise that the casinos would be state-operated, with all profits going toward education rather than privately run, with individuals or corporations skimming off tens of millions of dollars for themselves.
This means no outside casino operators and no Video Lottery Terminals, a fancy name for slot machines, at Ohio's racetracks.
Gambling dollars that are crossing state lines would stay in Ohio. The profits would go toward fixing the school-funding formula.
Crazy?
No zanier than a governor who wants to do the unthinkable and follow through on a campaign promise.
Conversations on Education
Gov. Ted Strickland will conduct six "Conversations on Education" at various locations around the state between Thursday and Dec. 20.
The times for the first five events are 4:30 to 6 p.m. with the final conversation in Athens scheduled from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
The dates and locations are:
Thursday - Columbus at WOSU Studio at COSI
Dec. 11 - Cleveland at WCPN Studios.
Dec 12 - Toledo, at WGTE Public Media.
Dec. 18 - Mansfield, at the Ohio State University Mansfield Campus, Ovalwood Hall, Founders Auditorium.
Dec. 19 - Cincinnati, at CET Studio.
Dec. 20 - Athens, at WOUB Center for Public Media.
Each forum will be available by live Webcast at www.conversationOnEducation.org
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: Gov. Ted Strickland, who will hold the first of six forums on school funding Thursday in Columbus, is going to need a high school football field full of money to fundamentally change the way Ohio pays to educate 1.8 million schoolchildren.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Akron, OH
Posted 08:24 AM, 11/16/2008
Willie, y'all aren't any good at makin' excuses for y'alls State Capital hero. Teddyboy ran on a platform, where he stated that he already had a plan for fundin' the schools. Here two years later, he's done nuthin' that his predecessors have done, except talk about it.
Teddyboy is an example of the only change the demoncritters provide, is the person in charge.
akron, oh
Posted 09:29 AM, 11/16/2008
The Gov. has cut 733 million and then 530 million from the state budget. And guess what - the sky has not fallen. Just goes to porve that more cuts should occur and most likely will.
Akron, OH
Posted 09:42 AM, 11/16/2008
"The two best ''real time'' indicators of the economy, according to the budget office, are personal income taxes and nonauto sales taxes.
Personal income taxes were down $66.7 million for the month and nonauto sales taxes were off by $45.1 million."
And when Obama and Congress raise taxes on business owners (the majority of employers), overall personal income and tax on it will go down due to job cuts, and sales tax revenues will go down due to decreased spending.
Tax increases on any personal income under $1 million is going to kill the economy even worse.
akron, oh
Posted 09:45 AM, 11/16/2008
And yet the government continues to get more inefficient. While the private sector has cut 1.2 million jobs in the past year - the public sector has added 200,000. (As reported in USA today this week)
Akron, OH
Posted 11:58 AM, 11/16/2008
I like the idea of more in-home care and less nursing homes. Thinking about where I want to end up -- it ain't one of those depressing elderly storage bins. I'd much rather stay in my home with care available.
Posted 12:13 PM, 11/16/2008
Ohio funding for public schools is unconstitutional. The Ohio Supreme Court made that ruling repeatedly and ordered the state legislature to fix it. To fix it, state legislators should first be jailed for contempt of court. Then, from jail, they need to demand that our federal dollars be returned to Ohio rather than sent to an illegal war in Iraq and corrupt corporations on Wall Street. That would solve a lot of problems rather than create new ones through casino crooks.
Tallmadge, OH
Posted 12:53 PM, 11/16/2008
Casinos run by the lottery would probably work ok in Ohio as long as all profits went to the lottery.
Posted 05:21 PM, 11/16/2008
Willard is on to something here, but because a majority of Ohioans, and the leaders they elect, are bound up in the straitjacket of Biblical babble that equates gambling (casinos) with sin, approving one casino let alone more, and having them run (preposterously) by government of all operators, is as apt to happen as the Rapture.
But logical, common sense economics like allowing more of the thousands of Ohioans, who are sequestered to expensive nursing homes, to spend their end days at home, and enable tens of millions to be re-directed to school funding, a long-term goal everyone says is the future of Ohio, would be a move that could be made. But legislators who need campaign contributions to fuel their re-election campaigns, will put their self-interests above state-first concerns. They are, after all, political animals, and nursing homes, fearful that their over-priced meal ticket would be taken from them, would fund challengers to their seats.
Again, the decision comes down to Ohio voters. For those in the know, like Mr. Willard who has a special expertise on school funding, there are solutions. Turning the key on the solutions, however, is in the hands of voters. Ohio is very much in the mess former leaders Ohioans have elected to office. If Ohioans can escape from their antipathy to gambling or feeding the nursing home beast, it might be able to recover from the maliase its in.
