When lawmakers meet behind closed doors, the people pay

When legislators go out of their way to meet behind closed doors to discuss the public's business, we suppose no outcome should surprise us.
Still, it is difficult not to be surprised by the product of a "working group" formed by Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to draft legislation that would "simplify" the state's tax code.
What has become clear is that simplification is a code word for eliminating the state's graduated income tax. And the ultimate effect of such simplification can be seen in the proposal that the working group came up with in recent weeks -- the shifting of the state's tax burden from high-income taxpayers to the middle class.
Here's the plan
The committee's plan, which became public after it was sent to the Ohio Department of Taxation for analysis, would trim the state's nine tax brackets to three. The present brackets range from 0.743 percent for taxable income below $5,000 to 7.5 percent for taxpayers making $200,000 or more. The three tax brackets would provide a break for those with income of $20,000 or less, who would pay nothing. Those earning $20,000 to $45,000 would pay 2.5 percent and everything over $45,000 would be taxed at 3.9 percent.
The state's top income tax rate would drop from 7.5 percent to 3.9 percent. And the effect of that would be savings of about $1 billion a year for those making more than $100,000, while 70 percent of Ohioans -- the middle class -- would have to make up the difference.
When Householder named a working group of five Republicans and two Democrats to go behind closed doors to do the work that should have properly been done by the Ways and Means Committee in the open, the two Democrats declined to participate. They were accused of playing politics.
Somehow, it is not politics for Republicans to close the door on Joe Taxpayer while they discuss how to best extract money from Joe's pocket, but it is politics for the Democrats to demure.
As we said a couple of weeks ago, these working groups are a relatively new development. They are part of an effort that has been years in the making to block the public out of the legislative process. It gained impetus when the doors were closed on the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, the agency that helps draft legislation requested by a member of the General Assembly. The LSC now does all of its work in secrecy and won't even confirm if a specific piece of legislation is in the pipeline.
Will it work?
The irony is that this working group has probably undermined its very purpose of putting together a viable tax reform package. Even Republicans who believe in simplification are running away from a formula that would increase taxes for the middle class.
Rep. Charles Blasdel of East Liverpool, R-3rd, is a member of the working group and takes issue with our characterization of the process as anything less than open.
The group, he says, was only discussing tons of information that was collected in public hearings held last year around the state. Those hearings, he said, showed clearly that Ohio's high marginal tax rates are hurting the state's ability to attract business to Ohio and that people are in favor of replacing the graduated tax with a flat tax.
That said, Blasdel adds, "the last thing we want to do is inflict a large tax increase on the middle class."
That's good to hear. It would have been better if the people had heard it through an open, bipartisan debate. If the Department of Taxation report hadn't hit the press this week, it's likely that the first the public would have heard about the fruit of the working group's labor was when Householder announced his simplification plan, which he was planning to do April 15.