Kasich's Budget Will Hurt Ohio with Steep Cuts

[iwasthere]

Yep, quite the contradiction.  Perhaps the poster child for whats wrong with public education.  A self professed teacher who would flunk a fifth grade grammar test.   I mean, come on!

we call it creative writing.

[iwasthere]

A teacher? You must skip over the capitalization lesson then, eh?

yep my interests laid in lunchrm worker, hall monitored, study hall std, crossing guard and lookout for the smoking snitches err i mean police. i  never had time for the three r's.

[Rick Rowlands]

Yep, quite the contradiction.  Perhaps the poster child for whats wrong with public education.  A self professed teacher who would flunk a fifth grade grammar test.   I mean, come on! 

[Dan Moadus]

A teacher? You must skip over the capitalization lesson then, eh?

[iwasthere]

rr i am a teacher(sub) i make a decent wage for my knowledge.  the salary will not put me in line of upper middle class. the monies i make assures me that i will not be asking for an ohio direction card. rr, have you ever parttake in helping out in your local school system as a tutor, mentor or assistance to the classroom teacher?

[Rick Rowlands]

No I won't bitch.  I champion the idea of paying directly for the services provided by my community.  besides, once collective bargaining is eliminated teacher salary will decrease and we may only need a 9 mil levy!

[ytowner]

Cutting K-12 Public schools funsing  15 percent is ok?  Ricky, you'll be the first to bitch when your district places a new

12 mill levy on the ballot next year to make up the funding cuts.....

Man, you just don't get it.....you are indeed clueless......

They would play levies on the ballot regardless. Instead of having the ability to cut labor costs, they are forced to pay them more and more as their union demanded more and more.

[irishbobcat]

Cutting K-12 Public schools funsing  15 percent is ok?  Ricky, you'll be the first to bitch when your district places a new

12 mill levy on the ballot next year to make up the funding cuts.....

Man, you just don't get it.....you are indeed clueless......

[Rick Rowlands]

Some pretty good ideas here, including reforms to allow counties to have more flexibility in how they conduct their affairs.

Its amazing to think that government blew right through all that stimulus money and have nothing now to show for it.  Not only that, they became addicted to the money and thought it would continue!

[irishbobcat]

Kasich budget will include cuts, cuts, more cuts
ShareThis
Sunday, March 13, 2011  04:50 AM
By Joe Hallett, Joe Vardon and Jim Siegel

Gov. John Kasich's first budget will roil the Ohio landscape on Tuesday, especially the public, nonprofit and private entities that count on the state's largesse.

The salad days are over. Ohio is in the poorhouse. There is a projected $8 billion hole in the next two-year state budget, and Kasich won't fill it with tax increases. He will cut, cut and then cut some more. Services will be consolidated and privatized. Some user fees probably will be raised. Mandates will be lifted.

"This is going to be a budget that is easy to hate," said state Rep. Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster, chairman of the House Finance Committee. "But the problem is, we have to govern."

Far more than previous state budgets, Kasich's will include significant policy changes with the usual taxing and spending decisions.

"I can promise you the budget will be reform-oriented," Kasich said on Thursday.

Details have been hard to come by; Kasich's staff has reduced the usual gusher of budget leaks to droplets. There were reports last week that Kasich may lease the Ohio Turnpike, privatize the Ohio Lottery and sell five prisons to private entities. One source told The Dispatch that three prisons could be sold and operated privately.





In his State of the State speech last week, Kasich provided a partial roadmap for where cuts will be made. He warned government entities that used their one-time shares of the roughly $5.7billion Ohio received in federal stimulus funds for operating costs to expect that money to be eliminated.

"I can't fill that stimulus gap," he said. "It is not going to happen."

If Kasich's budget is true to his word, universities and local schools can expect that hundreds of millions in stimulus funds will not be replaced. Ohio's primary and secondary schools are receiving about $13 billion in state aid in the current two-year budget, including $875 million from the federal stimulus. Universities are receiving about $600 million in federal stimulus funds for instruction to go along with their $3.4 billion allotment from the state.

"There is heavy reliance in the higher-education subsidy on stimulus dollars, like 15 to 20 percent, so we're expecting that the magnitude of the reduction for higher education may be in about that range," said William Napier, senior adviser to the president of Cleveland State University.

Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association, said that based on the amount of federal stimulus in current K-12 funding, he anticipates a reduction of 15percent or more.

"With cuts of that magnitude, you need to look at staff reductions or program changes, or both," Asbury said. "There really is not a lot that can be done."



Last week, Kasich spoke at length about the documentary Waiting for "Superman" - which criticizes teachers unions and features a successful charter school in Harlem, N.Y. The governor also said the national Teach For America program would soon be in Ohio.

Bills in both the Ohio House and Senate would greatly expand Ohio's school-choice voucher programs and allow Teach For America, which trains recent college graduates and professionals to teach in low-income school districts, to grow.



Many expect Kasich will call for more tax-funded tuition vouchers to pay for private school, expansion of privately operated charter schools, and more open enrollment to give students more choices among public schools.



Local governments, in Columbus and every corner of Ohio, are bracing for cuts and reforms in the Kasich budget. The state's local-government fund is distributing about $1.3 billion in the current two-year budget.

Columbus has already seen its state support slide to a projected $41 million this year from a high of nearly $51million in 2001. The local-government fund is the third-largest source of revenue for the city behind income and property taxes, with 70 percent of the money used for the Police and Fire divisions.

"We understand there will be across-the-board reductions and shared sacrifice," said Dan Williamson, spokesman for Mayor Michael B. Coleman.



About 85 percent of the state budget is spent at the local level, raising questions about whether Republicans will hold firm on state taxes only to see local taxes rise.

"There are many dangers associated with what we're going to try to do here, and that is one of the significant ones," Amstutz said.

Larry Long, executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, said his association has submitted nearly 50 proposed reforms. They are aimed at removing unfunded state mandates and giving county commissioners more control over their budgets and flexibility to raise the 1.5percent "piggyback" sales tax assessed by many counties by a quarter or a half of a percentage point.

The association has proposed an alternative form of county government that would allow for eliminating elected officials, such as coroners in small counties, or combining offices, such as county treasurers and auditors into one elected fiscal officer.

"If we can't have the (state) money, we have to find ways to better manage," Long said.



In addition to possible funding cuts, lawmakers and local officials expect there will be incentives to combine departments and share services - another move Kasich mentioned last week.

The governor also suggested reforms within Medicaid by providing greater care for mothers at risk of giving birth to low-weight babies and reducing costs related to nursing homes, hospitalization and home health care.

He said the state should change sentencing requirements to reduce prison costs, especially for inmates spending less than a year behind bars.

How do all these cuts and reforms - and the changes Kasich has kept secret - add up to $8 billion? Tune in Tuesday.



After rolling out his budget at 1 p.m., Kasich will hold a town-hall meeting starting at 6 p.m. at the Riffe Center's Capitol Theater. The event is free but attendees must obtain tickets through the governor's office or legislators.

"I can promise you the budget will be reform-oriented," Kasich said on Thursday. "With this budget, I am sure I will get some really smart people in the legislature who will say 'I've got a better way to do this.' And that's good.

"The numbers won't change. They're non-negotiable. But the policies are negotiable."