GOP lawmakers want to adjust state budget

By Marc Kovac

The school-funding proposal takes up 700 pages in the state budget.

COLUMBUS — A group of Republican lawmakers has asked the Democratic leader of the Ohio House to pull Gov. Ted Strickland’s education reform and school funding proposal from the state’s biennial budget.

The letter, written by Dayton- area Rep. Peggy Lehner and signed by 24 other Ohio House Republicans, states that the plan is “extremely complex and will have significant impacts on a broad range of educational institutions and practices,” which will require “adequate hearings and legislative debate outside of the context of the budget process.”

The signers of the letter released Monday wrote that they are supportive of a Democratic effort to separate education from the state’s two-year operating budget.

And they asked that Strickland’s school plan be heard by the House’s education committee before being placed on the floor for a vote.

“We realize this may pose some significant logistical challenges, but with an issue of such paramount importance, it only makes sense that the members appointed to deliberate education-related issues be given the opportunity to weigh in on the policy side prior to any final decisions on the funding side,” according to the letter.

The Ohio House’s finance committee and its various subcommittees have been holding hearings for weeks on the budget bill. Speaker Armond Budish has said he expects the legislation to be ready for a floor vote in late April.

Rep. Bruce Goodwin, a Republican from Defiance, who signed the letter released Monday, said he would like more time to consider the reform plan and debate the issues involved.

He said he supports continuing the current school funding methodology for the next year or more while vetting the issues involved more fully or breaking education funding into its own budget.

“It’s such a huge, huge undertaking to make the changes that are part of this process,” said Goodwin, who is also a member of the House’s finance committee. “We need to spend more time ... discussing these aspects.”

He added, “Seven hundred pages is a huge chunk out of House Bill 1,” he said. “I think it would stand by itself in a much better fashion.”