Ohio House Democrats want to funnel tax dollars back to schools and local governments handed a whopping cut in Republican Gov. John Kasich's state budget passed last year. State Republicans say they are soundly against the idea.
House Minority Leader Armond Budish, a Beachood Democrat, and five Democratic members of the House Finance Committee appeared at a Statehouse news conference Monday morning calling for $400 million in additional funding for schools and local governments hit by cuts in the state's operating budget.
In Kasich's first two-year budget signed into law in July 2011, local governments and schools faced deep cuts adding up to more than $2 billion collectively. Local governments were smacked with a 34 percent cut in the Local Government Fund and both schools and local governments had revenues from utilities and business property taxes slashed.
The Democrats are proposing the funding increase be inserted into Kasich's mid-budget review plan currently undergoing legislative hearings. They would fund the grant program by snatching up $265 million in surplus revenue, $120 million in rainy day funds and $15 million from a proposed hike in the severance tax proposed by Gov. John Kasich on oil and gas drillers. In future budgets, the fund would rise to $500 million and be paid for by adding in the proceeds of the severance tax, which is expected to rise in future years.
Kasich's drilling tax was removed from his budget proposal by House Republicans, but late last week House Speaker William G. Batchelder, a Medina Republican, indicated his caucus was open to discussing the issue. Kasich wants to use the money from the drilling tax for a small income tax cut for all Ohioans.
Rob Nichols, a Kasich spokesman, snapped off the olive branch from Democrats to Kasich on the drilling tax idea with a resounding crack.
House Republican spokesman Mike Dittoe also ripped the Democrats in a statement, saying that they raised income taxes, cut state funding for schools and drained the state's rainy day fund when Budish was the House Speaker in 2009.
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