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Senate OKs $71B-plus state budget
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
The Ohio Senate has given its final OK to a $71 billion-plus biennial budget that includes tax cuts for individuals and small businesses, funding for housing-assistance programs, pay raises for judges and other public officials, and an increase in taxes on cigarettes.
The legislation was finalized by a Conference Committee of the House and Senate after an overnight session that stretched into the early morning hours Thursday.
The Senate signed off on the Conference Committee report later in the day by a vote of 23-9, with one Democrat joining majority Republicans in supporting and one GOP member joining minority Democrats in opposing.
The House is expected to take up the budget today. Gov. John Kasich will sign the two-year spending plan into law before Wednesday, the start of the new fiscal year.
He’ll likely use his line-item veto authority to strike provisions he opposes before adding his signature.
Proponents said the legislation will result in more than $1.8 billion in tax relief over the next two fiscal years.
Opponents said the final bill benefits wealthy residents at the cost of needy ones.
The Conference Committee approved a phased-in tax deduction for small-business income up to $250,000, with 75 percent deductible this year and 100 percent thereafter.
Small-business income above $250,000 would be subject to a flat tax of 3 percent. The budget also would reduce income-tax rates for all brackets by 6.3 percent.
The final legislation would increase taxes on cigarettes by 35 cents per pack, to $1.60 from $1.25. But it removed language that would have increased taxes on other tobacco products.
A new Ohio 2020 Tax Policy Study Commission will develop recommendations for reforms, including consideration of shifting Ohio to a flat income-tax rate of 3.5 percent or 3.75 percent.
That panel also will have until Oct. 1 to issue a report to the general assembly concerning a potential increase in tax rates on oil and gas produced via horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The spending plan includes an increase of about $950 million for primary and secondary schools over the biennium, with no district receiving less in state funding than amounts allocated during the current fiscal year.
Sen. Tom Sawyer, D-Akron, said that while funding assurances were positive, lawmakers still have not addressed school funding issues.
“I want to be clear: While my colleagues and I do not wish to keep artificial funding streams forever, we in the Senate have yet to invest in a real formula with adequate funding that is lasting and durable,” Sawyer said. “We have yet to establish a deliberative, collaborative, bipartisan process to determine what it costs to educate our children and then fund it.”
The final legislation does not include charter-school reforms. A separate bill increasing accountability for charters is moving through the Senate.
Tuition and fees at colleges and universities would be frozen for the next two years, with those campuses required to identify ways to cut costs by 5 percent.
The legislation continues the governor’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility, though provisions call for additional reform efforts to reduce fraud and better target spending for the needy.
The budget includes pay raises for judges, sheriffs, prosecutors and local officials, but not statewide officeholders or lawmakers.
It increases the total funding that can be deposited into the state’s budget-stabilization fund, pushing the total to about $2 billion from about $1.5 billion.
The budget also includes language allowing consumers to buy fireworks without completing purchaser’s forms that disclose personal information or acknowledge that it’s illegal to use such products in the state.
The legislation restored the state’s historic tax-credit program, funding for housing assistance projects and backing for the state’s Straight A Fund.
And it includes the establishment of closure commissions to review plans by the governor to close certain state facilities, including developmental centers in Youngstown and Dayton.
The budget includes some restrictions on abortion, including language requiring clinics to be located within 30 miles of hospitals with which they have transfer agreements. That provision was deleted by the Senate but restored by conferees.
Most Democrats in the Senate voted against the budget.
The Ohio Newspaper Association is asking Kasich to veto language in the bill that would eliminate journalists’ access to concealed handgun records. State law currently allows reporters to see the permit documents but not copy them.
The proposal also sets aside money for police training, eliminates special elections in February and prohibits independent health care and child-care workers under contract with the state from unionizing.