Report: Ohio operations need drastic change

By Jim Siegel

Columbus Dispatch

For foundering state and local governments, the status quo is no longer an option.

That is the gist of a report released this week by the state’s largest metro chambers of commerce, including the Youngstown/ Warren Regional Chamber.

The document does not mince words about Ohio’s dire situation and the need for leaders to muster the political courage to change it.

“Our government’s operating system is obsolete. It can no longer do what needs to be done,” the report says.

Called “Redesigning Ohio,” it makes sweeping recommendations on how Ohio leaders approach state budgeting, local governments, regulations, public unions and criminal justice, including a call to change sentencing provisions and close three prisons.

With Gov.-elect John Kasich and the state Legislature facing an estimated $8 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget and a number of school districts and local governments hurting, the report by national government-budgeting expert David Osborne and former Ohio Budget Director Greg Browning outlines a new way of doing things.

“Many would argue we have, for all practical purposes, a permanent fiscal crisis where we’ve got an imbalance at the structural level between revenues and expenditures,” said Browning, who noted that government costs continue to outpace tax revenue and personal income. “Simply cutting government without improving its productivity may not be much more than a temporary fix.”

The plan does not purport to fix the short-term budget crisis, though it says its recommendations could save nearly $1.4 billion over two years. Supporters say it is more about long-term state and local changes.

“If they don’t [change], we will have local governments simply declaring bankruptcy in this state,” said Joe Roman, president of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “The point is, can we become more efficient in delivering services? And [having] 3,700 governments in the state of Ohio just doesn’t do that for us.”

The report calls Ohio’s local governments “cumbersome, ineffective and expensive creatures of the past” that drive the state’s growing tax burden. To encourage more sharing of services, the report recommends earmarking 20 percent of the state’s local-government fund to pay for collaboration projects.

“This is an opportunity to use incentives, carrots and sticks, to change the way local government operates,” said Tony Paglia, vice president of government affairs for the Regional Chamber. “Right now, the local- government fund is given with no strings attached.”