No state budget planning

COLUMBUS

In case you haven’t heard, Ohio’s economy isn’t in the best of shape.

Lots of people are out of work — upward 650,000, about 50,000 of whom joined the ranks of the unemployed over the past 12 months.

And there remains a certain dread in the air that is prompting the wise among us to refrain from frivolous spending.

Lawmakers are well aware of the economic climate. They talk about it all of the time in their campaign speeches. Republicans, in particular, have been shouting from the rooftops about a coming multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.

In fact, they were so concerned about the situation that a year ago, they decided to do something about it.

Buried in the state budget, they created a Budget Planning and Management Commission, its lone task to create “a strategy for balancing the state budget for fiscal years 2012 and 2013.”

The six-member panel is required to provide a report with its recommendation to the full Legislature and the governor by Nov. 30. That’s an interesting date choice; it’s after the election, so any talk of increased taxes won’t hamper anyone’s campaigning.

A lot of talk

By my count, it’s been almost a year since the commission was created. There’s been plenty of talk since then — again, mostly among Republicans, some sincere, some just trying to scare the electorate — about the looming budget deficit and the difficult budget cycle coming next year.

Given the potential enormity of the situation and the ongoing public outcry over governmental spending, can you guess how many times the Budget Planning and Management Commission has met?

The answer is zero. As in zilch. Or nada.

That’s not for lack of trying. Sen. Shannon Jones, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, added an amendment to separate legislation last week that would have required the commission to meet at least six times in coming months.

Republicans in the Ohio House attempted to do the same, and Rep. Ron Amstutz, a Republican from Wooster, introduced the provision as a separate bill.

But those efforts failed, and lawmakers have left town for the summer (though they did manage to designate the bullfrog as the officials state frog and the salamander as the official state amphibian before the spring session ended).

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.