Toledo
Blade...
Ohio Senate
committee’s plan adds $115M for schools
Turnpike leasing
restricted
By Jim Provance
COLUMBUS -- An Ohio Senate committee Tuesday voted to add $115 million
to the state budget for schools, restrict the ability of the governor
to lease the Ohio Turnpike without legislative approval, and strip out
language requiring a merit-pay system for teachers.
The Senate Finance Committee put its first stamp on a $55.7 billion,
two-year version of a budget that passed the House solely with GOP
support last month.
The committee will hold hearings on its revised, slightly bigger plan
this week with the intention of sending the 4,800-page bill to a full
Senate vote next week.
That will presumably set up a joint conference committee to work out a
compromise between the two chambers’ visions. Thorny subjects such as
how to pay for nursing homes under Medicaid are expected to remain on
the table until the conference committee stage.
Local governments still face significant cuts in state aid, but $100
million over two years that the House had set aside to encourage
service collaboration between them now would go into the entire pot for
general distribution. No local government that receives less than
$750,000 from the state local government revenue-sharing fund would see
a cut. That’s up from $500,000 under the House-passed plan.
The Senate plan adds funding above the House numbers for the PASSPORT
in-home health care program for the elderly, the Help Me Grow early
childhood care program, and Kinship program that supports grandparents
and other relatives who provide child-care services.
“The devil is in the details. I am cautiously optimistic,” said Lori
McClung, president of Advocacy and Communication Solutions, which is
focused on child care and education initiatives.
The plan, like the House version before it, closely follows the
framework Gov. John Kasich gave lawmakers in March.
There is still plenty of pain to go around as schools, local
governments, universities, social services, and a swath of state
agencies expect significant cuts, primarily because of the end of
federal stimulus dollars that propped up their recession-depleted
budgets.
“The cuts, while painful, we think are responsible,” Senate President
Tom Niehaus (R., New Richmond) said. “We don’t think there are any
surprises here. The governor’s been very clear, as have been I and
Speaker [Bill] Batchelder about the necessity of reining in state
spending so we do not create more problems for the future.”
The revised spending plan finds the additional money for schools and
some other programs by assuming that better-than-expected tax
collections seen over the last few months will continue into the next
budget biennium beginning July 1.
But Rep. Chris Widener (R., Springfield), the committee’s chairman,
urged caution.
“Just because we see a few upticks in revenues over estimates that were
very conservative estimates to begin with … we are probably just a tick
away from the next recession,” he said.
The House already had boosted basic school subsidies by $80 million
over the biennium on top of what Mr. Kasich’s administration had
originally proposed.
But like local governments, the loss of federal stimulus dollars and
revenue from a pair of business and utility taxes will mean net cuts
for schools even under the larger Senate plan.
The Senate plan would add about $85 million directly to the state aid
funding formula for K-12 schools that amounts to roughly $6.3 billion a
year. It also provides nearly $30 million to boost by $17 per year for
each student at schools that have been ranked excellent or excellent
with distinction.
This gives a financial boost to high-performing local districts such as
Anthony Wayne, Maumee, Ottawa Hills, Springfield, Sylvania, Washington
Local, Perrysburg, Rossford, and Bowling Green.
“That funding is targeted again to the wealthier districts,” said Rep.
Michael Skindell (D., Lakewood), the finance committee’s ranking
Democrat. “The schools that have greater challenges because of higher
poverty rates, a greater number of special ed children, or a larger
number of different languages being spoken are not going to
significantly benefit from the increases in the Senate substitute bill.”
The Senate plan would allow the Kasich administration to explore a
long-term lease with a private company to operate the Ohio Turnpike for
a lump-sum payment to the state, but it would require him to come back
to lawmakers for final approval before signing
The plan strips from the bill several provisions that critics argued
would greatly reduce oversight.
It also removes provisions that would have eliminated automatic step
and longevity pay hikes for public school teachers in favor of a new
merit-raise program, which would be partly based on student performance.
Read it at Toledo Blade
|
