The Observer

Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: News

Embattled governor of Ohio Ted Strickland is still attempting to balance the budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. [Click to enlarge]

For the past 22 months, Ohio politicians have been attempting to balance the state's 2010-2011 fiscal year budget. In that time, everything from the severe nationwide recession to traditional partisan fighting have upset any precarious balances achieved. Though the issue has faded from the public spotlight since the June 30 budget deadline, state officials have been working to resolve what seems to be a never-ending task - balancing a state budget in the current economy. They are still not done.

In July of 2007, the state came one vote shy of passing Ohio's first unanimous budget since 1923. A bipartisan accomplishment, Governor Strickland's 2008-2009 budget, his first, earned praise from both chambers of the Republican-controlled General Assembly and was projected to leave Ohio with a $56 million surplus when it expired. The budget increased funding for many social services while cutting property taxes for disabled and senior Ohioans.

Cue the economic collapse. The budget projections - which had cautiously assumed slow economic growth, with unemployment peaking at 6 percent - became useless. In January 2008, just five months after passing the budget, that $56 million surplus had turned into a projected deficit of approximately $1 billion. Strickland authorized the addition of the Keno gambling game, projected to raise about $73 million, but the state still had to slash well over $1.5 billion from the budget in three separate cuts throughout 2008, and was staring down a projected $7 billion deficit at the end of the next budget cycle.

In early 2009 Strickland presented his proposed 2010-2011 budget. In order to cover the estimated $7 billion hole from a sharp drop in income tax revenue, the governor's plan included $5.5 billion in one-time funds, including federal stimulus money and the entirety of the state's rainy day fund. The proposal also incorporated Strickland's "evidence-based" school funding plan. An altered version of the governor's plan passed the now-Democratic House in a party-line vote at the end of April. A small number of Democrats proposed rolling back the date of the final phase of a tax decrease passed by the Republican General Assembly in 2005 to temporarily increase revenue, but the proposal was not used.

Continued...

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