COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio House has passed its version of the state budget that overhauls the governor’s tax plans, steers more money to schools and revises certain health care policies.
The two-year, $71.5 billion budget was approved on a 63-36 vote Wednesday. It contains a 6.3 percent income tax cut beginning in tax year 2015. That would lower the top rate to just below 5 percent.
Majority Republicans described the bill as “pro-growth,” saying it would leave more money in Ohioans’ pockets.
The House budget bill “continues to move Ohio on a glide path toward greater economic success and a better place for our students and families to live,” Speaker Cliff Rosenberger (R-Clarksville) said.
GOP lawmakers stripped major elements of Gov. John Kasich’s tax proposal from the bill, including increases on certain business and sales taxes used to help fund an income tax cut. They permanently instituted a 75 percent tax deduction for the first $250,000 in income earned by small businesses.
Democrats called the spending plan out-of-line with residents’ priorities. They say “a bill of that magnitude should have been a strategic and targeted blueprint to grow the state’s economy for the future, but instead became a vehicle for tax cuts that favor the richest one-percent and last-minute attacks on working Ohioans,” read a statement from the House Democrats.
The House plan addresses Kasich’s expansion of the Medicaid program, an unpopular decision with his fellow Republicans at the Statehouse. The budget directs the state to pursue a waiver of Medicaid rules to implement a new program design.
Patients would face higher costs and suspensions, delays in enrollment caused by additional paperwork and annual and lifetime caps that could interrupt care, according to Policy Matters Ohio.
“Ohio’s Medicaid expansion has been an unqualified success, with more than half a million Ohioans newly insured and billions of federal dollars pumped into the Ohio economy,” said Policy Matters senior project director Wendy Patton.
Other provisions in the bill include:
Creating the Ohio Military Facilities Commission, which would provide state funding to military installations in Ohio to ensure that they are prepared for the upcoming BRAC
Supporting rape crisis centers with an additional $500,000 per year
Providing an additional $2.75 million per year to Ohio food banks
Creating the Health Food Financing Initiative to support access to healthy food in underserved areas
Maintaining TANF funding for the Ohio Pregnancy and Parenting Support Program
Earmarking $750,000 per year to the Ohio Legal Aid Fund to provide representation to economically disadvantaged veterans
Providing $1.25 million to the Secretary of State to mail absentee ballot applications to Ohio voters
Making a $10 million capital appropriation to begin work on the rehabilitation of the Buckeye Lake dam and requiring all contracts including incentives for early completion
Establishing the Defense/Aerospace Workforce Development Initiative and appropriating $10 million per year to strengthen Ohio’s aviation industry
Forming the Local Government Safety Capital Grant Program to provide up to $100,000 to help local governments pay for public safety-related capital costs
Extending safe harbor provisions to teachers and students through FY’17
Appropriating funds to the Resurrecting Lives Foundation for traumatic brain injury programs
The measure now goes to the GOP-dominated Senate where the Finance Committee has already heard informal testimony from the Office of Budget Management and Legislative Service Commission.
Under state law, the General Assembly must pass a budget and get it signed by Kasich prior to July 1.