Budget bill gets hasty approval

COLUMBUS (AP) — State lawmakers hastily voted to approve a budget bill Monday that legalizes racetrack slots, overhauls the funding of public schools and reverses a tuition freeze at state colleges and universities.

The $50.5 billion, two-year spending plan also restores some money to libraries, removes a provision that would have allowed natural-gas drilling in state parks and strips school districts of the authority to determine whether pupils say the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Democratic-controlled House voted 54-44 for the budget, and the Republican-led Senate approved it by a vote of 17-15. Democrats supported the plan, and Republicans generally opposed it, decrying its spending levels, reliance on one-time federal money and the speed with which it was pushed through the Legislature.

Rank-and-file lawmakers didn’t see the roughly 3,000-page document until late Monday morning. Eight hours later, it was on its way to Gov. Ted Strickland, who is expected to sign it into law as early as Wednesday.

Ohio was forced to resort to two separate weeklong spending plans, which threatened services and created administrative headaches, after leaders failed to reach a compromise by the end of the fiscal year June 30.

The House and Senate approved a third temporary budget to begin Wednesday in case Strickland wants more time to review the full budget before signing.

The compromise resolves an impasse between Strickland and Senate Republicans over the governor’s plan to install slot machines at Ohio’s seven horse-racing tracks to raise an estimated $933 million. Strickland signed an executive order Monday to expand the Ohio lottery to include the slots, and the Legislature would acknowledge his authority to do so in the budget bill.

The rest of the state’s $3.2 billion budget deficit was 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 a suggestion by Strickland to reduce the amount the state contributes to the largest public employee pension fund.

The budget plan could lead to at least 2,000 state employees’ losing their jobs, but final layoff numbers won’t be available until state agencies can analyze their spending cuts.

Those who administer Ohio’s social-safety services said they had been slashed beyond reason.

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.”

Democrats who control the Ohio House defended the budget plan.

“We have also made many painful and unpopular spending cuts, but we have done so in a way that reduces the size of government while still protecting our most vulnerable Ohioans,” the Democrats said in a statement.

Lawmakers and Strickland once touted the continuation of a tuition freeze at public four-year colleges and universities. Instead, the budget compromise cut $170 million in state aid for higher education and restored more funding to public libraries and mental health services.

Lawmakers decided that protecting the well-being of some of the state’s most vulnerable residents was more important than maintaining the tuition freeze, said state Sen. John Carey, a Wellston Republican and the Senate’s main budget negotiator.

The deal decriminalizing slots-like video lottery terminals at seven Ohio racetracks would give the state Supreme Court sole power to decide whether the machines violate the Ohio Constitution. The idea is to minimize the amount of time any legal challenge could take. The anti-gambling Ohio Roundtable has already threatened legal action.

Republicans opposed to gambling said the state would never realize the amount of money promised from the slots.

“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,” said state Rep. Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster.

The education overhaul introduces a new funding system for Ohio’s schools, which Strickland wanted, but also largely maintains funding for charter schools, a key priority of the GOP.