Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is urging the Ohio General Assembly to pass the full biennial budget before its Friday deadline rather than to pass a temporary budget with negotiations continuing into July.
Under the Ohio Constitution, the state’s two-year budget must be passed and signed into law before the fiscal year’s end on Friday. However, the budget legislation approved by the Ohio House and Ohio Senate differs significantly from one another.
According to DeWine, he is confident that the general assembly can resolve disputes between the house and senate budget plans and pass the budget before the end of the month. He urges state lawmakers to “keep working.”
“I have full confidence in the General Assembly’s ability to get this budget passed by the Constitutionally prescribed deadline of June 30th. The legislative parties need to return to the bargaining table and keep working,” DeWine said.
The house’s $88 billion budget includes greater funding for social services, daycare, K–12 schools, and food banks. It also aims to eliminate Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee, which requires kids to repeat third-grade if they don’t pass a reading proficiency test. The budget passed with substantial bipartisan support.
The senate’s $86 billion budget increases taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools well beyond what the house authorized, and it delivers larger tax cuts by combining the three tax bands in the House budget into two. Republicans in the senate also reduced the amount spent on social services by the house and reinstated Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee. The senate budget passed on party lines without support from the Democrats.
According to DeWine, Ohioans need the general assembly to complete this budget on time.
“Ohio’s fiscal standing, financial outlooks, and bond ratings are all strong. Schools, local governments, and all Ohioans need this budget done on time to keep Ohio’s economy growing,” DeWine said.
DeWine’s urging follow Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens‘ (R-Kitts Hill) indication last week that with the approximately 800 differences between the biennial budgets passed by the house and senate, it is likely that the state legislature may miss its end-of-the-month deadline and need to pass a temporary budget until they can strike a final deal.
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) disagreed with Stephens’ saying that he believes with compromise lawmakers can reach an agreement before the June 30th deadline.
According to Huffman, it’s time to make bold changes to the state budget.
“Challenging the status quo is difficult. Now is the time to make the bold changes necessary to focus on the results our taxpayers should demand, the results our parents should expect for their children’s education, and the results our state desperately needs to revitalize crumbling neighborhoods in our city centers,” Huffman said.
An Ohio think tank, the Buckeye Institute, said that although no budget is perfect, it prefers the version the senate passed.
“No budget is perfect, and The Buckeye Institute remains concerned about the sustainability of overall spending, but the Ohio Senate wisely uses Ohio’s record surplus to put Ohio on a path to greater prosperity,” Rea S. Hederman Jr., executive director of the Economic Research Center and vice president of policy at The Buckeye Institute said.
If lawmakers cannot pass the budget by the deadline, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in recent history. The last time the legislature was unable to reach a consensus on a budget by June 30th was in 2019, when it took the then-Speaker of the House Larry Householder, and the then-President of the Senate Larry Obhof until July 17th to settle disagreements on taxes, health care, and education.
The general assembly passed a temporary budget to maintain governmental operations during that time. As a result, public agencies could not launch new initiatives, fill open positions, or grant any raises at that time. Some public universities even delayed issuing tuition invoices to students.
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Hannah Poling is a lead reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Hannah on Twitter @HannahPoling1. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mike DeWine” by Mike DeWine. Background Photo “Ohio Statehouse” by General Ization. CC BY 3.0.
