Kasich is distancing himself from tax bill

February 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich praised a western Ohio lawmaker last February who had a plan to repeal Ohio’s income tax over 10 years.

But Kasich has been careful not to embrace the timeline laid out in the tax plan pushed by state Rep. John Adams since he announced his candidacy for governor in June. And now that the bill is under fire at the Statehouse, both men are taking pains to distance Kasich from it.

Kasich served in Congress for 18 years beginning in 1983, presiding over the House Budget Committee when it balanced the federal budget for the first time in decades. He later went to work as a managing director for Lehman Brothers in New York.

Repealing the income tax is still central to Kasich’s platform in the race to unseat Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland this fall, but he says he doesn’t know how long it will take.

Declining to commit to a particular timeline has relieved Kasich of having to answer tough questions about the income-tax repeal. When nonpartisan legislative analysts attached a $12 billion price tag to Adams’ proposal in January, for example, Kasich declined to speculate precisely how he would make up for such losses over the next decade if elected. He said the bill contained a timetable, and his plan did not.

But the 10-year timetable had already been attached to Adams’ plan for nearly a year when Kasich praised the lawmaker during a Lincoln Day dinner last winter. Kasich had appeared at a fundraiser for Adams, also a Republican, in October 2008, the lawmaker said, so he presumably knew the details of his proposal when he spoke.

“I believe Adams is right,” he told Auglaize County Republicans while speaking in Adams’ home district. “I don’t think you can get rid of the income tax in a couple years, it’s gonna take a long time.”

He called Adams, a two-term legislator from Sidney, “a forward-thinking state representative who happens to share the view that I have that in order to improve Ohio’s economic situation ... we have to figure out a way to get rid of the income tax ...”

Messages were left over two days seeking clarification from Kasich on those statements and how they relate to his current stance on Adams’ bill.