Agreement on state budget averts crisis for schools

Agreement on state budget averts crisis for schools

Perhaps it was Gov. Ted Strickland’s threat to call legislators back into session over the holiday recess, or it was the compromise on new construction rules. But whatever the reason, enough Republicans in the Senate agreed to support Strickland’s plan to fill an $851 million hole in the biennium budget, thus averting a crisis for the more than 600 school districts.

“Across the country, states are slashing education budgets in a short-sighted attempt to make it through the recession,” the governor said. “Here in Ohio, investing in education is the cornerstone of our plan to rebuild Ohio’s economy from the ground up. We have again overcome political differences to achieve a bipartisan agreement to balance the budget and protect our schools from devastating cuts. This compromise will avoid thousands of teacher layoffs, school building closures and the elimination of athletics in our schools.”

Strickland added that Ohio can now refocus its efforts on competing for federal Race to the Top resources that, along with the education reform plan, will improve students’ ability to compete with students anywhere in the world.

For the past two months, the GOP controlled Senate had refused to follow the Democratic controlled House’s lead and adopt the Democratic governor’s proposal to delay the final 4.2 percent planned reduction in income taxes. The tax cut went into effect in 1995. Had the last phase not been delayed, the $851 million gap in the budget would have been filled by slashing funding for Ohio’s schools. The only other way to make up the shortfall was to increase taxes, which was a nonstarter in this economy.

Indeed, Republicans in the Senate characterized postponing the final phase of the income tax reduction as a tax increase — which it isn’t.

Ohio taxpayers will continue to pay a tax rate 16.8 percent less than in 2004.

The deal maker

The Republicans who ultimately supported the budget were won over by the administration’s agreement to launch a pilot program for proposed changes in the state construction procedures. In addition, a requirement that school districts provide all-day kindergarten has been amended. A school district will be able to get an exemption if the school board passes a resolution offering justification for why it can’t offer all-day kindergarten.

Given our criticism of the Republicans in the General Assembly for putting politics before the interests of the people of Ohio, it’s only right that we acknowledge the support of the Republicans in the Senate who made the passage of the biennium budget possible.

The construction issue became a major hurdle after Democrats in the legislature were pressured by the unions not to agree to them until there were full-blown hearings.

The pilot is a compromise that was acceptable to all parties. Construction changes would bring Ohio in line with the vast majority of states, which allow for the negotiation of public projects through a general contractor instead of with a multitude of smaller contractors on different facets of the project.

The chancellor of the board of regents, Eric Fingerhut, will establish the criteria to determine three capital projects at University System of Ohio institutions to utilize alternative construction management methods.

The passage of the biennium budget now gives the Strickland administration and the General Assembly the ability to work on Ohio’s economic recovery. There’s a lot of work to be done considering the number of Ohioans who are unemployed as a result of the national and global economic recession.