COLUMBUS – The Ohio Senate on Wednesday unanimously a bill authorizing the distribution of $350 million of federal funding to help counties, municipalities and townships with COVID-19 pandemic-related expenses.
The funding, which comes from the federal CARES Act, a pandemic rescue package approved March 27, excludes jurisdictions with populations above 500,000 because they already qualify for direct payment.
That includes the city of Columbus and Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery and Summit county governments. Municipalities and townships within those counties, however, are still eligible for the funding appropriated in the Senate bill.
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Ohio’s largest teacher’s union is calling on state leaders to take money from Ohio’s $2.7 billion Budget Stabilization Fund, otherwise known as the “rainy-day fund,” to avoid budget cuts to education planned by Gov. Mike DeWine.
DeWine is cutting $775 million from the state budget over the next two months, $465 million of that coming from primary, secondary and high education funds, and says he has no plans to dip into the rainy-day fund until the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
“Parents and communities cannot count on being able to go back to work unless they can count on their kids going back to safe schools. It is going to be really hard to count on safe schools for our kids if we have massive cuts to education funding,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, which represents 122,000 teachers, faculty members and support professionals.
The OEA is also urging Congress to provide $175 billion in critical funding for the nation’s schools as part of the federal CARES Act for states and local communities.