Budget aided by more income, less spending

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

While a national report shows states are struggling to find cash amid economic uncertainty, an Ohio agency reports that the state is taking in more tax money than expected while spending less than the recently-enacted budget projects.

A November report from the Ohio Office of Management and Budget showed that for the first third of this fiscal year beginning July 1, the state saw an extra $96 million in tax revenue going to the fund that pays for most state operations, the Dayton Daily News reported.

The increase is primarily due to stronger than expected sales tax receipts, according to the budget office.

The state also has spent less during the same period — about $268 million below estimates laid out in the two-year budget adopted in June.

Part of the dip in spending could be attributed to changes in the way Medicaid is paid for. According to the office, those payments may be delayed and could catch up later.

The general-revenue fund, where rising tax revenue and declining spending numbers come from, pays for state education, prisons, Medicaid, environmental protection and other services. The budget allocates slightly more than $27 billion in spending this year.

Meanwhile, a report by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers, the “Fall 2011 Fiscal Survey of States,” found that Ohio is better off than most, which have been hard-hit by the economic downturn, weak economic growth and the end of the federal stimulus.

State Budget Director Tim Keen and his aides are still studying the national report, “but the initial reaction here is that Ohio is doing well in comparison to other states in what has been — and will continue to be — a very challenging and uncertain economic climate,” Keen’s spokesman Dave Pagnard told the newspaper in an email.

Despite spending less than projected, Ohio was one of 43 states whose general fund spending for 2012 was up from 2011, according to the national report. The study found that overall 2012 state budgets included a 2.9 percent increase in general fund spending.