Ohio House declines to override Gov. Kasich’s Medicaid veto

Staff/wire report

COLUMBUS

Republican Gov. John Kasich’s veto protecting Medicaid expansion will stand for now after a decision by state lawmakers to delay a threatened override.

Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, a fellow Republican, said Thursday his chamber has decided to let the health care debate in Washington play out before acting.

He said the GOP-controlled chamber had the 60 votes that would have been needed.

“At this juncture, we want to give the federal government the summer to see if they’re going to come to a conclusion in Congress before we take action on moving forward with the freeze waiver and the request,” Rosenberger said.

He said the House still has until the end of Ohio’s two-year legislative session in December 2018 to act.

Some 700,000 low-income adults are now covered under Ohio’s expansion, at a cost of almost $5 billion – most of which is picked up by the federal government. The Kasich administration estimated that 500,000 Ohioans could lose coverage under the proposed enrollment freeze within the first 18 months. With House action stalled, the Ohio Senate canceled a session for considering overrides it had scheduled for next week.

The House did vote to override 11 other items Kasich vetoed from the state budget last Friday. They restored a provision giving legislators additional control over future Medicaid spending and revived the Healthy Ohio program, which imposes additional Medicaid requirements that could bump 125,000 enrollees off the program.

They also restored a proposal to increase taxes on health insurers that would have sent money to counties and regional bus services.

The Trumbull County commissioners applauded the move by the Ohio House that gives counties back revenue they had been threatened to lose through the loss of sales taxes on Medicaid Managed Care Organizations.

The loss of the MCO money was going to cost the county $2.7 million in 2018.

“This is a great step in the right direction,” Commissioner Dan Polivka said. Trumbull and the rest of the counties in Ohio have been hard hit by the loss of local government funding from the state, he said.

“We applaud the legislators in taking the first step to hold Trumbull County harmless,” Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa said in a press release.

State Rep. Michael O’Brien of Warren, D-64th, said he expects the Ohio Senate to take similar action and for the federal government to authorize the move to give the sales-tax money back to counties.

Mahoning County commissioners made a trip to Columbus in February to argue for continuation of the tax. Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said he’s happy with the House vote and hopes the Senate will do the same. The county receives about $4 million from the tax, he said.

“It would be hard for us to function taking that out of the budget,” Traficanti said. “This gives us a lifeline.”

Commissioner Dave Ditzler said the 87-10 vote shows it’s not a partisan issue.

“A majority of both the Democrats and the Republicans voted to override the veto because they know how necessary it is for county governments,” he said.

State Rep. John Boccieri of Poland, D-59th, voted against the measure. He played a role in getting the commissioners in front of the House and Senate finance directors earlier this year.

“It would be a devastating hit for local government,” he said.