Ohio faces $640 million in budget cuts

COLUMBUS — The state will have to cut another $640 million from its budget for the current fiscal year — and it faces a shortfall of $7 billion for the coming biennium.

“Basically, over the next two years, Ohio will confront the most serious erosion in revenues that it has experienced in the last 40 or 50 years,” state budget director J. Pari Sabety said Monday.

Sabety, Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher met with reporters Monday in the governor’s Cabinet Room to outline the updated state budget projections and give notice of the challenges facing the administration and lawmakers in coming years.

Read more in Tuesday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com