After months of debate, state lawmakers are in the home stretch of passing a new two-year state budget plan.
But there are still major differences between the House and Senate budgets that need to be resolved, including tax reform, education funding, and abortion clinic restrictions.
The Ohio Senate is scheduled to pass its $130 billion budget proposal Thursday, almost two months after the House approved a slightly larger plan of its own.
The House is expected to reject the Senate’s plan, meaning a legislative conference committee will spend the next week or so hammering out a compromise budget to send to Gov. John Kasich.
Here are some of the key issues in the House and Senate budget plans that will have to be worked out:
Taxes: Both budget plans call for a 6.3-percent income-tax cut, but the Senate’s plan also calls for raising Ohio’s tobacco tax by 40 cents a pack and offering business owners an income-tax deduction on their first $250,000 of net income.
The across-the board tax cut would reduce Ohio’s income-tax rate from 5.33 percent to 4.99 percent on income above $200,000 per year — a rate not seen since 1982, according to lawmakers.
Higher education funding: The Senate’s budget includes a two-year tuition freeze at all state colleges and universities, as well as $240 million in additional state funding to help schools make up the revenue they would lose because of the freeze.
The Senate also inserted language that says state university students residing within 25 miles of their school do not have to live on campus.
K-12 Education funding: The House and Senate budgets are overall pretty similar when it comes to school funding. Both plans would ensure that no school district in Ohio would get less state money – unlike Kasich’s budget proposal, which would have affected more than half of the districts in the state.
Each budget plan also would raise the base per-pupil funding amount from $5,800 this year to $6,000 in 2017.
One difference: the Senate’s plan would reduce the amount of classroom time devoted to testing and student assessments.
Medicaid: The House plan would require some Medicaid recipients to invest their own money into a health savings account and pay premiums. The Senate removed that language.
The House’s budget would also stop funding for Medicaid coverage of pregnant women up to 200 percent of the poverty level, and end coverage for breast and cervical cancer screening for women on Medicaid. The Senate’s plan, however, would restore that funding.
Both budgets accept another two years of federal money for Medicaid expansion, despite grumbling from conservative lawmakers.
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