COLUMBUS – With a little over a week before its deadline, the Ohio Senate on Wednesday approved its version of the state’s biennial operating budget, a plan which majority Republicans claim would close a projected revenue shortfall of roughly $1 billion.
The House is expected to refer the measure to a conference committee where the House and Senate versions of the budget will be reconciled. The Ohio Constitution requires a balanced budget signed by the governor by June 30.
“This was a very tight budget, but we listened carefully to Ohioans to understand their priorities and expectations of financial stability for the state of Ohio,” said Sen. Scott Oelslager (R-North Canton), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
Oelslager and Senate president Larry Obhof (R-Medina) say lawmakers in the General Assembly’s upper chamber eliminated the budget gap by reducing spending so no tax increases were needed.
The bill cuts administrative costs across state agencies by as much as 4 percent, calls for a review of each executive agency every two years eliminated or consolidated several boards and commissions, Oelslager said.
The Senate plan also eliminates the state’s bottom two income tax brackets, simplifies the tax code and eliminates income taxes for Ohioans earning below $10,500 a year.
Senators also doubled the tax deduction families can take for college savings through the 529 plan known as College Advantage, as well as for the ABLE program, which allows families of children with disabilities to save for expense associated with caring for them.
The plan calls for the state to receive waivers from the federal government allowing the state to get more flexibility in regulating its own insurance market, free of federal mandates, and freezing Medicaid expansion in July 2018.
That last provision has been criticized by those who say it will hurt that state’s efforts to battle an epidemic of drug overdose deaths, but Obhof and Oelslager say the Senate included nearly $180 million to fight the opiate crisis, on top of the nearly $1 billion per year already spent on drug abuse and addiction.
Local officials unveil their own plan to fight drug abuse in Columbus and Franklin County
The Senate plan includes $60 million for protective services and programs to support children in drug-affected families, $2 million dollars to assist county coroners and crime labs swamped by overdose and addiction cases. It also preserves $20 million intended for the expansion of treatment and recovery housing, funds upgrades to the statewide prescription tracking system and to combat prescription abuse, and adds $5 million to help counties establish drug abuse response teams and take other steps.
The spending blueprint calls for an additional $154 million in state foundation aid for K-12 education in 2018 and another $120 million in the budget’s second year.
Senators removed a provision that would have permitted unlimited increases in tuition and added more than $208 million to the fund for need-based financial aid.